Muhammad and the Believers

Muhammad

and the

Believers

At the Origins of Islam

Fred M. Donner

THF. RF.I.KNAP PRESS OF
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2010

Copyright © 2010 by Fred M. Donner
All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Donner, Fred McGraw, 1945—

Muhammad and the believers: at the origins of Islam / Fred M. Donner.
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-674-05097-6

1. Islam— Origin. 2. Islam— History. 3. Islamic Empire— History— 622-661.
4. Muhammad, Prophet, d. 632. I. Title.

BP55.D66 2010
297.09'021— dc22 2009052195

For Alex and Lucy

r j

Contents

I .ist of Maps ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
A Note on Conventions xvii

I The Near East on the Eve of Islam 1

The Empires of the Late Antique Near East 3
Arabia between the Great Powers 27
Mecca and Yathrib (Medina) 34

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement 39

The Traditional Biography of Muhammad the Prophet 39
The Problem of Sources 50
The Character of the Early Believers’ Movement 56

3 The Expansion of the Community of Believers 90

Sources 90

The Community in the Last Years of Muhammad’s Life 92

Contents

viii

Succession to Muhammad and the Ridda Wars 97
The Character of the Believers’ Early Expansion 106
The Course and Scope of the Early Expansion 119
Consolidation and Institutions of the Early Expansion Era 133

4 The Struggle for Leadership of the Community,

34-73/655-692 145

Background of the First Civil War 146

The Course of the First Civil War (35-40/656-661) 1 55

Between Civil Wars (40-60/661-680) 170

The Second Civil War (60-73/680-692) 177

Reflections on the Civil Wars 189

5 The Emergence of Islam 194

The Umayyad Restoration and Return to the Imperial Agenda 195
The Redefinition of Key Terms 203

Emphasis on Muhammad and the Qur’an 205
The Problem of the Trinity 212
Elaboration of Islamic Cultic Practices 214
Elaboration of the Islamic Origins Story 216
The Coalescence of an “Arab” Political Identity 217
Official vs. Popular Change 220

Appendix A: The urama Document 227

Appendix B: Inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem 233

Notes and Guide to Further Reading 237

Glossary 257

Illustration Credits 265

Index 267

Maps

1. The Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, ca. 565 c.e.

2. The last Byzantine-Sasanian War, ca. 610-628 c.e.

3. Arabia, ca. 600 c.e. 28

4. Early campaigns of expansion 120

5. The civil wars 156

6. Later campaigns of expansion 198

Preface

A

A little over a century ago, renowned French scholar Ernest Re-
nan (1823-1892) wrote the following summation of his findings on
the origins and early history of Islam: “We arrive, then, from all parts
at this singular result: that the Mussulman movement was produced
almost without religious faith; that, putting aside a small number of
faithful disciples, Mahomet really worked with but little conviction
in Arabia, and never succeeded in overcoming the opposition repre-
sented by the Omeyade party.”

While Renan’s statement admittedly represents an extreme and
harsh formulation of the ideas he advances, for many years Western
scholars who were studying Islam’s beginnings continued to hold
many of those ideas. The notions that the prophet Muhammad (died
632 c.e.) and his followers were motivated mainly by factors other
Ilian religion, and that the Umayyad family, which ruled from 661
lo 750, were fundamentally hostile to the essence of Muhammad’s
movement, is even today widespread in Western scholarship. Re-
nan’s most cynical comment— that the movement that grew into what
we know as Islam “was produced almost without religious faith”— has,
in subtler guise, been embraced by many subsequent scholars, usually

Preface

xii

through a process of reductionism whereby the driving force of the
movement begun by Muhammad is identified as having been “re-
ally” something other than religious conviction. At the end of the
nineteenth century, Hubert Grimme sought to prove that Muham-
mad’s preaching was first and foremost that of a social, not a religious,
reformer; W. Montgomery Watt, reflecting the regnant position of
the social sciences in the middle of the twentieth century, argued
that the movement was engendered by social and economic stresses
in the society in which Muhammad lived; and numerous others, in-
cluding L. Caetani, C. H. Becker, B. Lewis, P. Crone, G. Bowersock,
I. Lapidus, and S. Bashear, have argued that the movement was really
a kind of nationalist or “nativist” political adventure, in which reli-
gion was secondary (and, by implication, merely a pretext for the real
objectives).

In the following pages I attempt to present almost the exact oppo-
site of Renans views. It is my conviction that Islam began as a reli-
gious movement— not as a social, economic, or “national” one; in
particular, it embodied an intense concern for attaining personal
salvation through righteous behavior. The early Believers were con-
cerned with social and political issues but only insofar as they related
to concepts of piety and proper behavior needed to ensure salvation.

Moreover— and again in sharp contrast to Renan and many subse-
quent Western (and Muslim) scholars— I see the rulers of the Umayyad
dynasty (660-750) not as cynical manipulators of the outward trap-
pings of the religious movement begun by Muhammad but as rulers
who sought practical ways to realize the most important goals of the
movement and who perhaps more than anyone else helped the Be-
lievers attain a clear sense of their own distinct identity and of their
legitimacy as a religious community. Without the contributions of the
Umayyads, it seems doubtful whether Islam, as we recognize it today,
would even exist.

A proper historical understanding of Islam’s beginnings requires
that we see it against the background of religious trends in the whole

of the Near East in late antiquity— not only in an Arabian context,
even though Arabia was where Muhammad lived and acted. By the
sixth century c.E., Arabia was thoroughly penetrated by trends of re-
ligious thought current in neighboring lands. I shall therefore begin
with a brief review of this pre-Islamic Near Eastern background
(Chapter 1), after which 1 shall consider how a Believers’ movement
began in Arabia with Muhammad (Chapter 2), the rapid expansion
of the Believers’ movement in the decades following Muhammad's
death (Chapter 3), the internal divisions that tore the movement dur-
ing its first century (Chapter 4), and the emergence from the Believ-
ers' movement of something we can clearly recognize as Islam about
two generations after Muhammad’s death (Chapter 5).

Acknowledgments

It is a pleasure to recognize many institutions and individuals who
facilitated the writing of this book. I am grateful to the National En-
dowment for the Humanities, an agency of the U.S. federal govern-
ment, and to the American Center for Oriental Research in Am-
man, Jordan, for granting me an NEH/ACOR Fellowship during
part of 2001, which enabled me to spend most of the first half of that
year drafting parts of this work in the calm, supportive environment
of ACOR’s library in Amman. The Director of ACOR at that time.
Dr. Pierre Bikai, Dr. Patricia Bikai, and the ACOR staff, especially
its librarian Humi Ayoubi, made my stay there both productive and
pleasant. The former Dean of Humanities at the University of Chi-
cago, Professor Janel Mueller, generously allowed me to dodge my
responsibilities as department chair so that I could take those months
on leave, as well as another stretch of ten weeks in spring 2002, in
order to draft the book. The latter period was spent mostly at the
Jafet Library of the American University of Beirut, and I extend my
thanks also to the helpful staff of that fine institution. Among librar-
ies and librarians, however, my greatest debt is to the University of
Chicago’s Regenstein Library, and to its Middle East bibliographer,

XVI

Acknowledgments

Bruce Craig, who with his staff has built a collection that is peerless
in its comprehensiveness and ease of use.

Readers owe a debt of gratitude to numerous friends and col-
leagues who read all or part of this work in manuscript and offered
generous critical comments and suggestions. These saved me from a
number of gaffes and contributed much to the book’s clarity, co-
gency, and balance. Needless to say, the shortcomings that remain
reflect my stubbornness, not their lack of insight. In alphabetical or-
der, they are Mehmetcan Akpinar, Fred Ashen, Carel Bertram, Paul
M. Cobb, Hugo Ferrer-Higueras, Mark Graham, Walter E. Kaegi,
Khaled Keshk, Gary Leiser, Shari Lowin, Chase Robinson, Roshanak
Shaery-Eisenlohr, and Mark Wegner. The enthusiastic encourage-
ment of Drs. Leiser and Shaery-Eisenlohr was especially heartening.
I also wish to thank the twenty-five college teachers who participated
in the NEH Summer Institute on "Islamic Origins” that 1 directed
during summer 2000; it was in that setting that I was first able to try
out some of the ideas presented here, and their responses helped
sharpen my thinking and emboldened me to try formulating them
as a book of this kind. I am most grateful, too, to my esteemed col-
leagues at the University of Jordan, Professors ‘Abd al-'Aziz al-Duri,
Saleh Hamarneh, and Faleh Husayn, for their friendship and unwav-
ering support for this project, which helped reenergize me when I
had for various reasons lost momentum. My colleagues Touraj Dary-
aee (University of California, Irvine) and Gerd-R. Puin (Saarbriicken)
assisted me in securing photographs. Finally, I owe an unpayable debt
to my wife, Carel Bertram, for her sage advice, love, and encourage-
ment in everything I do, this book included.

A Note on Conventions

T

J. his book is meant mainly for nonspecialists— introductory stu-
dents and general readers with an interest in the beginnings of Is-
lam. It is not intended to be a work of technical scholarship, although
I hope that scholars will find some of the ideas I present in it novel
and worthy of serious consideration. Readers new to the subject who
wish to know where to find more information on a particular sub-
ject, or specialists who wonder about the supporting evidence for
something I say, will usually find what they need in the section
“Notes and Guide to Further Reading.” This is organized by chapter
and contains bibliographical suggestions and references to specific
points, organized more or less in the sequence in which they occur
in the body of the book.

I have generally omitted diacritical marks when converting words
from Arabic and other Near Eastern languages to Roman letters—
the general reader is confused or put off by them, the specialist gen-
erally does not need them, and the publisher abhors them as cum-
bersome and costly. The only exception is that I have retained the
signs for ‘ayn (c) and hamza (’).

A Note on Conventions

xviii

Names of persons are given in strict transliteration (but without
diacritics): thus, Muhammad, cA5isha, Sulayman, and so on. On the
other hand, whenever possible I have given most place-names in fami-
liar English forms: thus, Mecca (not Makka), Damascus (not Dimashq),
and so on. In most cases, I have dropped the Arabic article al- before
the names of persons, groups, and towns, while usually retaining it
within compound names (for example, ‘Amr ibn al-'As). Most Arabic
names are patronymic and include the word “ibn” (“son of”), so “cAmr
ibn Qays” might also appear as “Ibn Qays,” or simply as “ cAmr.”

The abbreviation “Q.” is used to indicate quotations from the
Qur an, Islam’s holy book, throughout the text.

Some dates are given first in the years of the Islamic or hijra calen-
dar (AH), followed after a slash by the Common Era (c.e.) date— so,
for example, Muhammad is said to have died in 11/632, which
means year 11 in the Islamic (lunar) calendar and 632 c.e.

The Muslim calendar is a lunar one of 354 days; consequently, a
given month and day slowly cycle through the c.E. calendar. The
twelve months of the Muslim calendar are alternately 29 or 30 days
long:

Muharram

30 day:

Safar

29

Rabi' I

30

Rabi‘ II

29

Jumada I

30

Jumada II

29

Rajab

30

Sha'ban

29

Ramadan

30

Shawwal

29

Dhu ]-Qacda

30

Dhu 1-Hijja

29

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

The Near East on the
Eve of Islam

T

J. he roots of the religion of Islam are to be found in the career of a
man named Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah, who was born in Mecca, a
town in western Arabia, in the latter part of the sixth century C.E.
Arabia at this time was not an isolated place. It was, rather, part of a
much wider cultural world that embraced the lands of the Near East
and the eastern Mediterranean. For this reason, to understand the
setting in which Muhammad lived and worked and the meaning of
the religious movement he started, we must first look far beyond his
immediate surroundings in Mecca.

Muhammad lived near the middle of what scholars call “late
antiquity”— the period from roughly the third to the seventh or
eighth centuries c.E.— during which the “classical” cultures of the
Greco-Roman and Iranian worlds underwent gradual transforma-
tion. In the Mediterranean region and adjacent lands, many features
of the earlier classical cultures were still recognizable even as late as
the seventh or eighth century, albeit in new or modified form, while
others died out, were changed beyond recognition, or were given
completely new meaning and function. For example, in the sixth
century c.E. the literate elites of the lands of the old Roman Empire

The Near East on the Eve of Islam

3

around the eastern Mediterranean still cultivated knowledge of Greek
philosophy and Roman law and of Greek and Latin literature, even
though the pursuit of these arts was less widespread and often dealt
with new and different issues than in Roman times. At the same time,
most people had by this time given up their former pagan cults for
Christianity. Similarly, the public and civic rituals of classical times,
focused on the amphitheatre, the public bath, and the performance
of civic duties, were beginning to atrophy— especially in smaller
towns— and, after the fifth century, were gradually being replaced by
more private pursuits of a religious and introspective kind. With the
spread of Christianity in the eastern Mediterranean lands came
also the emergence— alongside Greek and Latin— of new liturgical,
and eventually literary, languages such as Syriac, Coptic, Armenian,
and Ethiopic, which had formerly been unwritten. We can see in
retrospect, then, that the late antique period in the eastern Mediter-
ranean was one of transition between the preceding classical era,
with its well-articulated civic life and Greco-Latin focus, and the
subsequent Islamic era, with its emphasis on personal religious ob-
servance and the development of a new literary tradition in Arabic.

The Empires of the Late Antique Near East

In the latter half of the sixth century C.E., the Near East and Medi-
terranean basin were dominated politically by two great empires—
the Byzantine or Later Roman Empire in the west and the Sasanian
Persian Empire in the east. The Byzantine Empire was actually the
continuation of the older Roman Empire. Its rulers called them-
selves, in Greek, Rhomaioi— “Romans”— right up until the empire’s
demise in 1453. For this reason it is also sometimes called the “Later

Map 1. The Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, ca. 565 C.E. (borders
approximate)

4

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Roman Empire,” but I shall refer to it here as the Byzantine Empire,
after Byzantium, the village on the Bosporus on which the capital
city, Constantinople, was founded.

In the late sixth century, the Byzantine Empire dominated the
lands on the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean basin
(today s Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and so on). The other great empire, that
of the Sasanians, was centered on the mountainous Iranian plateau
and the adjacent lowlands of what is today Iraq, the rich basin of the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Just as the Byzantines preserved the Ro-
man heritage, the Sasanians were heirs to the long imperial traditions
of ancient Persia. Most of the vast region from Afghanistan to the
central Mediterranean was under the direct rule of one or the other
of the two empires. Even those areas in the region that were outside
their direct control were either firmly within the sphere of influence
of one or the other power or were the scene of intense competition
between them for political allegiance, religious influence, and eco-
nomic domination. This contested terrain included such areas as Ar-
menia, the Caucasus, and, most important for our purposes, Arabia.
A third, lesser power also existed in the Near East— the kingdom of
Axum (sometimes Aksum). The Axumite capital was situated in the
highlands of Ethiopia, but Axumites engaged in extensive maritime
trade from the port city of Adulis on the Red Sea coast. By the fourth
century, Axum had been converted to Christianity and for that rea-
son was sometimes allied with Byzantium; but in general our knowl-
edge of Axum is very limited, and in any case, Axumite culture did
not contribute much to Islamic tradition, whereas both Byzantium
and Sasanian Persia did. Hence, most of our attention hereafter will
be devoted to describing the Byzantine and Sasanian empires.

The Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine emperors ruled from their capital city at Constanti-
nople (modern Istanbul) on the Bosporus; the city was dedicated in

The Near East on the Eve of Islam

5

JUSTINIAN’S EDICT OK 554 c.e. TO THE PEOPLE OF
CONSTANTINOPLE. NOVEL CXXXII

We believe that the first and greatest blessing for all mankind is the
confession of the Christian faith, true and beyond reproach, to tire
end that it may be universally established and that all the most holy
priests of the whole globe maybe joined together in unity. . . .

330 C.E. by the Roman emperor Constantine as the “Second Rome.”
From Constantinople, the Byzantine emperors attempted to hold
their far-flung possessions together through military action and a
deft religious policy. The Byzantine emperors subscribed to a Chris-
tianized form of the vision of a united world order first advanced
in the West by Alexander the Great (d. 323 b.c.e.) and later adopted by
the Romans. Those who held to the Byzantine variant dreamed of a
universal state in which all subjects were loyal politically to the em-
peror and religiously to the Byzantine (“Orthodox”) church headed
by the patriarch of Constantinople, in close association with the
emperors.

The Byzantine emperors faced at least two main problems— over
and above the challenge of their Sasanian rival— in trying to realize
this vision. The first problem was maintaining the strength and
prosperity of the vast territory they claimed to rule, and their effec-
tive control of it, given the rudimentary technologies of communi-
cation and management available in that age— in short, the prob-
lem of government. In its heyday during the first century b.c.e. and
first century C.E., the Roman Empire had extended from Britain to
Mesopotamia and Egypt, a span of roughly 4,000 kilometers (km),
or 2,500 miles (mi). It included people speaking a dizzyingly wide
array of languages— Latin and Greek in many cities around the
Mediterranean, Germanic and Celtic dialects in Europe, Berber

6

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Land Walls of Constantinople. The city’s magnificent defenses, still im-
pressive today, permitted it to withstand the onslaughts of many enemies
from the fourth until the fourteenth century c.E.

dialects in North Africa, Coptic in Egypt, Aramaic and Arabic in
Syria, Armenian and Georgian and dozens of other languages in
the Caucasus and Anatolia, and Albanian and Slavic dialects in the
Balkans. The sheer size of the empire had caused the emperor Dio-
cletian (284-305) to create a system of two coordinate emperors,
one in the west and one in the east— so that each could better con-
trol his respective half of the empire, suppressing efficiently any
uprisings or unrest in his domain and warding off any invasions
from the outside. However, during the fourth and fifth centuries,
the invasions and migrations of the Germanic peoples and other
“barbarians,” such as the Avars and the Huns, were simply too much
for the emperors in Italy, who were overwhelmed by them. By the
early sixth century, much of the western half of the empire had be-

the Near East on the Eve of Islam

7

come the domains of various Germanic kings— the Visigoths in
Spain, the Vandals in North Africa, the Franks in Gaul, the Ostro-
goths in Italy. Paralleling this political disintegration was a wide-
spread economic contraction in many of the western Mediterranean
lands.

The eastern half of the empire, by contrast, managed to live on as
a political entity, and its economy remained much more vibrant
than that of the West. The Byzantine emperors in Constantinople,
despite some close calls at the hands of the Avars, Bulgars, and Slavs,
were able to ward off repeated barbarian onslaughts. Moreover, they
always thought of themselves as the rightful rulers of the former em-
pire in its full extent. Some even dared to dream of restoring the
empire’s glory by reclaiming lost lands in the west. This was espe-
cially true of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (ruled 527—565) —
who, depending on one’s point of view, might be considered either
“The Great’’ or merely megalomaniac. Justinian marshaled the full
power of the Byzantine state, including its powers of taxation, in an
attempt to reconquer the lost western provinces. His brilliant general
Belisarius did in fact succeed in reestablishing Byzantine (Roman)
rule in parts of Italy, Sicily, North Africa, and parts of Spain. Justin-
ian also spent lavishly on great buildings, of which the magnificent
church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is the finest surviving
example. But the cost of this was high, as his efforts to restore Rome’s
lost glory through conquest and construction left the empire’s popu-
lations impoverished and resentful, its treasury depleted, and its
armies stretched thin.

Urban centers in the eastern Mediterranean were much stronger
than those in the West, where cities had almost vanished, but their
prosperity was also weakened during the late sixth century. One
factor was a series of severe earthquakes that shook the eastern
Mediterranean lands repeatedly in this period; another was the
plague. Plague, which arrived in the 540s and returned every sev-
eral years thereafter, regularly harvested off part of the population

Hagia Sophia. Justinian’s great church in Constantinople, dedicated to
“Holy Wisdom,” symbolized the intimate nexus between the Byzantine
emperor and the church.

and further sapped the empire’s ability to recover its vitality. By the
late sixth century, the Byzantine Empire was ripe for devastating
onslaughts by the Sasanians— the final chapters in the long series
of Roman-Persian wars stretching back to the first century C.E. Re-
surgent under their powerful great king Khosro I Anoshirwan
(ruled 531-579), the Sasanians attacked the Byzantine Empire sev-
eral times during the 540s and 550s. They invaded Byzantine-
controlled Armenia, Lazica, Mesopotamia, and Syria and sacked
the most important Byzantine city of the eastern Mediterranean,
Antioch. Later, starting in 603, the Sasanian great king Khosro II
Parviz (ruled 589-628) launched an even more devastating attack
that resulted in the Persian conquest of Syria, Egypt, and much of
Anatolia. Like the attacks of the mid-sixth century, that war was

I he Near East on the Eve of Islam

9

Sinews of empire: A surviving stretch of Roman road in northern Syria.
Built to facilitate the movement of Roman legions, these roads not only
permitted the emperors to send troops promptly to distant provinces but
also served as vital ways for overland commerce.

possible in part because the Byzantine Empire was in a weakened
state.

The other major challenge faced by the Byzantine emperors be-
tween the third and seventh centuries had to do with religion. In 313
C.E., Emperor Constantine I (ruled 306-337) declared Christianity
a legal religion in the Roman Empire in the Edict of Milan; it was
established as the official faith by Emperor Theodosius I (“The
Great,” ruled 379-395). Since that time, the emperors had dreamed

10

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

of realizing the vision of an empire that was not only universal in its
extent but also completely unified in its religious doctrine— with the
Byzantine emperor himself as the great patron and protector of the
faith that bound all the empire’s subjects, both to one another and in
loyalty to the state and emperor. In the earlier Roman Empire, the
official cult of the deified emperor had served this purpose, while al-
lowing people to continue to worship their local pagan gods as well;
but when Christian monotheism became the empire’s official creed,
the emperors demanded a deeper, exclusive religious obedience from
their subjects.

This dream of religio-political unity, however, proved impossible
to attain. Not only did diverse groups of pagans, Jews, and Samari-
tans in the empire stubbornly resist Christianity; even among those
who recognized Jesus as their savior, there arose sharp differences
over the question of Christ’s true nature (Christology) and its impli-
cations for the individual. Was Jesus primarily a man, albeit one
filled with divine spirit? Or was he God, essentially a divine being,
merely occupying the body of a man? Since he died on the cross, did
that mean that God had died? If so, how could that be? And if not,
how could it be said that Jesus died at all? Since Christians believed
passionately that their very salvation depended on getting the credal
formulation of such theological issues right, debates over Christ’s
nature were intense and protracted. In the end, it proved impossible
to resolve these issues satisfactorily, even though the emperors ex-
pended a great deal of thought, money, and their subjects’ good will
in the effort to mediate disputes in search of a theological middle
ground acceptable to all sides. It must also be said that these debates
over doctrine often pitted powerful factions within the church against
one another for reasons that were as much personal and political as
doctrinal. Particularly important in this respect was the old rivalry
between the patriarchs of the ancient sees of Alexandria and Con-
stantinople, though the bishops of Rome, Antioch, and other centers
also played a part.

I In- Nan East on the Eve of Islam

11

( )rlhodoxy thus came to be defined through a series of church
councils— intensely political gatherings of Christian bishops,
sometimes supervised by the imperial court— that, among many
other items of business, successively declared specific doctrines to
he heresies. The result was that by the sixth century, the Christians
ol the Near East had coalesced into several well-defined communi-
ties, each with its own version of the faith. The official Byzantine
church— “Creek orthodox,” as it is called today in the United States—
was, like the Latin church in Rome, dyophysite; that is, it taught that
Christ had two natures, one divine and one human, which were
separate and distinct but combined in a single person. (This separa-
tiou enabled them to understand Christ’s crucifixion as the death of
his human nature, while his divine nature, being divine, was im-
mortal.) Byzantine Orthodox Christians were predominant in Ana-
tolia, the Balkans, Greece, and Palestine, and in urban centers
elsewhere where imperial authority was strong. On the other hand,
m Egypt, Syria, and Armenia most Christians, particularly in the
countryside, were monophysite, that is, they belonged to one of sev-
eral churches that considered Christ to have had only a single na-
ture that was simultaneously divine and human. (From their per-
spective, the key point about Christ was that in him God had truly
experienced human agony and death, but being God he was able to
i ise from the dead.) The emperor’s efforts to heal this rift by con-
vening the Council of Chalcedon (451) backfired when the resul-
tant formula was rejected by the monophysites, who clung tena-
ciously to their creed despite sometimes heavy-handed efforts by
the Byzantine authorities to wean them of it. A third group, largely
driven out of Byzantine domains by the sixth century but numerous
in the Sasanian Empire and even in Central Asia, were the Nestori-
ans, named after Bishop Nestorius of Constantinople, whose doc-
trine was condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431. Although
dyophysite, the Nestorians placed, in the eyes of both the “ortho-
dox" Byzantine church and the monophysites, too much emphasis

12

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Mar Saba. This great monastery, in the semi-desert east of Jerusalem, like
others in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia, was a product of the surge of
Christian religiosity that swept the Byzantine empire between the fourth
and sixth centuries C.e.

on Christ’s human nature and understated his divinity. North Af-
rica was home to yet another sect deemed heretical, the puritanical
Donatists, who rejected any role of the Byzantine emperor in their
affairs. Although in retreat after the fourth century, particularly af-
ter Augustine’s stringent efforts to refute them, the Donatists re-
mained active in North Africa as a minority beside the regionally
dominant Roman church.

These differences over doctrine, and their hardening into discrete
sectarian communities, plagued the Byzantine emperors’ efforts to
build a unified ideological base of support for themselves and gener-
ated widespread resentment in the eastern provinces (and sometimes
in the west) against the Byzantine authorities— a resentment that we

The Near East on the Eve of Islam

13

can glimpse in the numerous polemical tracts in which members of
one Christian community attacked the beliefs of others. The early
stirrings of Christian anti-Semitism are also to be found in tracts
directed explicitly against Judaism or in tracts in which Nestorians
are denigrated by other Christians who liken them, because of their
emphasis on Jesus’ human nature, to Jews, who of course denied
Jesus’ divinity altogether. Various Christian sects also directed some
polemical writings against Zoroastrianism, the official faith of the
Sasanian Empire (see below). Christian chauvinism was sometimes
pursued in less academic ways as well. Their refusal to build on the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem, for example, was partly to affirm Jesus’
supposed saying that no stone of the Temple would be left standing
on another (Mt. 24:2), but the Byzantine authorities’ use of the place
as a dumping ground was presumably in order to symbolize their
view that Judaism and its temple had been transcended by Jesus’
preaching and belonged in “the dustbin of history.” From the time of
Theodosius, there were, in addition to intermittent bouts of popular
anti-Jewish agitation, episodes of official discrimination, disposses-
sion, persecution, closure of synagogues, and forced conversion of Jews
by the Byzantine authorities.

Another feature of Christianity in the Byzantine Near East— one
that seems to have been shared by different Christian denominations—
was an inclination toward asceticism. Asceticism had deep roots in
the ancient world but seems to have become increasingly prevalent
during the fifth and sixth centuries. Its most extreme practitioners
indulged in spectacular— sometimes theatrical— forms of self-denial.
Some suspended themselves for long periods from trees, secluded
themselves in caves, or, like the famous St. Simeon the Stylite (died
459), perched atop pillars, exposed to the elements, to pray and preach,
sometimes for years on end, drawing pilgrims in large numbers.
Most minimized their intake of food or sleep, sometimes to virtually
nothing; others wandered the countryside almost naked to pray and
live on what the Lord, and sympathetic villagers, might provide. Less

14

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

sensational but far more widespread was the establishment of monas-
teries and convents, in which people took up an abstemious life of
prayer far removed from the temptations of this sinful world. The
monastic movement had begun in the early fourth century in the
Egyptian deserts, but the building of such communal refuges spread
rapidly into Syria, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia. The famous monas-
teries of St. Pachomius in Egypt, Mar Saba in Palestine, St. Simeon
in Syria, and Qartmin in Mesopotamia were merely the most cele-
brated examples of a widespread trend.

Whatever its particular form, this tendency to ascetic self-denial
was motivated by a conviction that salvation in the afterlife was to
be achieved not only through right belief, but also by strictly righ-
teous behavior. This involved, in particular, continuous prayer and a
refusal to succumb to the temptations of physical desires, such as the
need for sleep, food, shelter, sexual gratification, or human compan-
ionship, which were viewed by some, at least, as snares of the devil.
Most people, of course, lacked the commitment or the discipline
needed to engage in such heroic self-denial, but many acknowl-
edged that it represented a kind of ideal and were supportive of those
saintly individuals who could master their appetites sufficiently to
attain it— hoping, perhaps, that by aiding them they would them-
selves gain some of the sanctity that the ascetic was presumed to
have acquired. The ascetic movement thus belonged to a broader
trend in the Byzantine Christianity of the fourth to sixth centuries
that saw the articulation of a range of popular religious practices
that helped bridge the divide between clergy and laity. These in-
cluded pilgrimages, processions, the worship of saints’ shrines, the
veneration of icons, and new forms of liturgy, in all of which both
clergy and laity could be involved or in which lay persons could have
tangible contact with the sacred even in the absence of ordained
clergy.

Another dimension of the religious mood of the Byzantine do-
mains in the sixth century, and one not unrelated to asceticism, was

I 'he N car luisl on the Eve of Islam

15

SI Simeon. Ruins of the great cathedral constructed around the pillar on
which St. Simeon the Stylite sat for forty years; his asceticism attracted
cmwds of the devout and the curious to hear his sermons and resulted in
the establishment of the cathedral and an adjoining monastery.

I lie widespread appeal of apocalyptic ideas— that is, predictions of
the approaching end of the world, or End of Days. These usually
anticipated an imminent, cataclysmic change in the world that
would end current oppression or distress and usher in a new era in
which the righteous would be vindicated (the identity of “the righ-
teous" varying, of course, depending on who was spreading the pre-
du lions). In this new era or eon, they would vanquish their former

16

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

persecutors and enjoy happiness and prosperity for a time before the
dawning of the Last Judgment. With the Judgment, the righteous
would finally be delivered by attaining everlasting salvation in
heaven. A number of such apocalyptic scenarios were generated by
members of religious communities that faced Byzantine oppression
or harassment, such as the monophysite churches of Egypt, Syria,
and Armenia, and have an unmistakably vindictive quality. But
apocalyptic ideas were almost infinitely malleable and could also be
advanced by the orthodox, who portrayed the coming cataclysm as
one in which their faith would finally triumph over its stubborn op-
ponents; in their eyes, the struggle to convert all of mankind to
orthodoxy was a precursor to the Last Judgment. Indeed, one apoca-
lyptic notion linked the Byzantine emperor himself directly to the
events of the Last Judgment. According to this theory, which is a
kind of Byzantine variant of Jewish messianism, the Last Emperor,
after vanquishing the enemies of Christianity in battle and establish-
ing an era of justice and prosperity, would hand over royal authority
to Jesus at the Second Coming— an event predicted to happen in
Jerusalem— and thus dissolve the Byzantine Empire and inaugurate
the millennial era immediately preceding the Last Judgment. Re-
gardless of who advanced them, these various apocalyptic ideas gave
many people, even (perhaps especially) those suffering from poverty
or oppression, some hope for the future and also served as a call for
people to make greater efforts to live righteously, in order to be sure
to be counted among the saved when the Judgment came.

As in antiquity, daily life for most people in the sixth-century
Byzantine Empire was brutally harsh— so harsh that most of us alive
today, in the West at least, could hardly endure it. Members of the
elite— large landowners and high officials of church and state (en-
tirely male)— were extremely wealthy, sometimes highly educated,
and lived lives of leisure, but they constituted only a tiny fraction of
the total population. This male elite held virtually all formal author-
ity and dominated slaves, women, children, and men of common

The Near East on the Eve of Islam

17

class. A middling group of prosperous farmers and petty officials or of
moderately to very wealthy merchants existed but was relatively small.

' I ’he overwhelming majority of the population lived in dire poverty as
sharecroppers or peasants, poor urban laborers and artisans, or beg-
gars. Slavery was still legal as an institution and widespread as a social
phenomenon. There were few social services for the population and
early deaths from disease, starvation, exposure, exhaustion, abuse, and
violence must have been commonplace, particularly in periods of
civil unrest, which were frequent. One of the very few ways to move
up in society was through the imperial service, particularly the army—
some soldiers of peasant origin even rose to be emperor— but this route
was only open to a small number of men.

The emergence by the sixth century of bishops as the leading fig-
ures in the civic life of most towns of the Byzantine Near East may
have tempered the harshness of life slightly, for the bishops at least
acknowledged the poor, orphans, and widows in their midst as part
of their communities and recognized their responsibility to alleviate
the tribulations of such unfortunates. Unlike paganism, Christianity
saw every individual as having the potential to attain sainthood
through virtuous living and thus opened up vistas of a new kind of
egalitarianism. Because this egalitarian vision was far from being re-
alized in society, however, it is easy to understand how the ascetic
tendency in Christianity and apocalyptic hopes for deliverance could
become widespread in the Byzantine domains.

The Sasanian Empire

We know far less about the other great power of the Near East in the
sixth century— the Persian Empire under the great kings of the Sasa-
uiau dynasty (226-651)— than we do about the Byzantines. It, too,
encompassed vast territories, from the rich lowlands of the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers in the west, its greatest source of tax revenues
and the site of its capital, Ctesiphon (near modern Baghdad), to

18

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Afghanistan and the fringes of Central Asia in the east. The population
of this huge area spoke a variety of languages. Several Iranian lan-
guages (Middle Persian or Pahlavi, Soghdian, Bactrian, Khwarizmian)
dominated the highlands and the empire’s Central Asian fringes in the
northeast; the lowlands of Mesopotamia were the domain of Aramaic
and Arabic; and Armenian, Georgian, and probably a score of other
languages were dotted throughout the inaccessibly tangled terrain of
the Caucasus region.

In spite of the splendor of its impressive capital at Ctesiphon, for
much of its earlier history the Sasanian Empire was poorly central-
ized and poorly integrated, with power diffused among a number
of aristocratic families of the Iranian plateau who frequently con-
tested the Sasanian family’s leadership (and usually held some
power via important posts in the government). The great king’s very
shahanshah, literally “king of kings”— hints at the Sasanian
family’s uncertain claim to preeminence over these rival noble fam-
ilies, who obviously also claimed kingship. In the sixth century,
however, Great King Khosro I Anoshirwan (ruled 531-579) suc-
ceeded in asserting the royal prerogative against the nobility by
reorganizing the state, imposing a greater degree of centralization
through the efforts of his standing army and its garrisons and via an
extensive bureaucracy. His successor Khosro II Parviz (ruled 589-628)
was the main beneficiary of his policies, which enabled him to
launch the great campaign against the Byzantine empire that began
in 603.

Like the Byzantines, the Sasanians ruled a population that was
not only polyglot but also religiously diverse. Zoroastrianism (Maz-
daism), a version of the ancient traditional religion of Iran, was the
most important faith in the empire and dominant especially on the
Iranian plateau. Zoroastrianism was essentially a dualistic faith that
conceived of the universe as the arena of a cosmic struggle be-
tween the forces of good and evil, embodied in the gods Ohrmazd
(Ahura Mazda) and Ahriman, respectively. These primal forces

The Near Hast on the Eve of Islam

19

The Sasanian Throne-Hall at Ctesiphon, Iraq. In their capital at
Clcsiphon (in the south suburbs of modern Baghdad), the Sasanians
constructed a large palace with a soaring throne room, an amazing feat of
brick construction. Although a large part of the two wings that flanked the
central arch have now collapsed, the arch itself still stands.

were symbolized by light (particularly fire and the sun) and dark-
ness, a symbolism that traveled westward— it is, for example, the
ultimate source of the use of the halo to distinguish sacred figures
In European religious iconography. Zoroastrians said special prayers
tit the moments of sunrise and sunset to mark their reverence for
the turn, and many key rituals were performed in fire temples where
MU eternally burning sacred flame was tended by Zoroastrian

20

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

priests. Most of the major fire temples were located on the Iranian
plateau.

Zoroastrianism had long been associated with the Iranian monar-
chy, and during the Sasanian period became the quasi-official reli-
gion of the Sasanian state, although the relationship between the
Sasanian great kings and the Zoroastrian priests ( herbeds ) and high
priests ( mobeds ) was sometimes contentious. Zoroastrianism did not
display the same number of internal divisions as did contemporary
Christianity with its many rival sects, but there was a debate among
Zoroastrians over Zurvanism, which may have been virtually a form
of monotheism; it focused on the figure of Zurvan, considered by
some a manifestation of eternal time and the father of both Ohrmazd
and Ahriman. A few great kings flirted with rival forms of religious
expression, such as Manichaeism (founded by the prophet Mani in
the third century c.e.), Mazdakism (late fifth century C.E.), or Chris-
tianity. The special relationship of the Sasanians to Zoroastrianism,
however, endured until the end of the dynasty, and with good rea-
son, for Zoroastrianism bolstered the Sasanians’ ideology of univer-
sal rule because the great king was considered to represent the do-
minion of Ahura Mazda over the world. This, and the Sasanians’
sense that they were heirs to great Aryan empires of times gone by,
led them to consider themselves superior to all other earthly powers
(such as the Byzantines) who were, in their view, mere upstarts and
qualified only to be their tributaries.

The Sasanian Empire also included large communities of non-
Zoroastrians, however; some great kings subjected these to bitter
persecutions, while others seem to have tolerated them somewhat
less grudgingly than the Byzantine emperors did their religious mi-
norities. Particularly noteworthy were large communities of Jews in
Iraq (Babylonia), which with its famous Jewish academies was prob-
ably the greatest center of Jewish life and learning in the world at this
time. Also important were Christian communities, both monophy-
site and Nestorian. The Nestorians had been welcomed into Sasa-

77«* Near East on the Eve of Islam

21

Triumph of Shapur. This central panel from a wall relief engraved by
llii' Sasanians at Bishapur, Iran, commemorates the great king Shapur
Is victory over three Roman emperors. The great king, mounted on his
horse, holds the wrist of the emperor Valerian in an age-old symbol of
captivity. Meanwhile, the emperor Philip the Arab submits by kneeling
before him to request mercy, while two attendants look on. The
emperor Gordian III lies on the ground, trampled by the great king’s
steed. Overhead, a small angel bears a beribboned diadem symbolizing
divine favor for the great king.

iiiau territory after they had been condemned as heretics at the
Council of Ephesus in 431 and forced to flee; Ctesiphon, the Sasa-
itian capital, was the seat of the Nestorian patriarch. Whereas most
mnnophysite Christians in the Sasanian domains were concentrated
in northern Mesopotamia, Persian Armenia, Iraq, and the western-
most hinges of the Iranian plateau, the Nestorians spread more
widely and established small colonies in many areas, especially along

22

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

the trade routes to, and through. Central Asia, even far beyond the
Sasanian borders.

Zoroastrian society under the Sasanians was marked by a hierar-
chical order that was, if anything, even more rigidly defined than
that of Byzantine society. The traditional Iranian social order di-
vided the population into distinct strata, with religious leaders and
the small political elite of landowners and warriors forming an upper
stratum that was strictly differentiated from a commoners’ stratum of
peasants, artisans, and merchants (another scheme identifies the
strata as priests, soldiers, scribes, and farmers). Slaves, of course, were
at the bottom of the heap. This strict social hierarchy was reinforced
by Zoroastrian orthodoxy, which established separate fire temples for
the different strata. This system was probably most clearly in place
on the Iranian plateau; in Mesopotamia and Iraq— where Zoroastri-
ans, although politically important, were fewer in number than Jews
and Christians— the social order may have been somewhat more
fluid, but even there stratification between elites and commoners
prevailed. The rigidity of this social order helped create the con-
ditions in which movements such as Manichaeism or Mazdakism,
which aimed at creating a more equitable society, found popular
support; it was only partly tempered by reforms initiated by Great
King Khosro Anoshirwan in the early sixth century.

For all their differences, the Byzantine and Sasanian empires
shared certain common features and faced similar challenges. Their
rulers struggled to unify vast domains and fragmented populations
by the use of force, when necessary, and by recourse to a religious
ideology that they tried to impose on their subjects, which bolstered
their claim to rule. Both, perhaps inadvertently, fostered movements
with egalitarian tendencies that used religious ideas to blunt the
harshness of existing social norms. Both also faced the challenge of
warding off external enemies on their frontiers, many of them no-
madic groups from the Eurasian steppes: The Byzantines faced the
Goths, Huns, Slavs, and Avars, whereas the Sasanians had to deal

The Near East on the Eve of Islam

23

with the Kushans, Chionites, Huns, Hephthalites (White Huns), and
Turks.

Above all, however, the two empires faced the challenge of each
other. As the two great competitors for dominance in the Near East
in the sixth century, their political rivalry had religious, cultural-
ideological, and economic dimensions, the last-mentioned includ-
ing competition for sources of metals and other resources, for trade
revenues, and for taxable lands in an overwhelmingly semiarid re-
gion, the Near East, that had relatively few of them. At stake was not
merely Byzantine versus Sasanian political control and economic
influence, but also Christianity as opposed to Zoroastrianism and
Hellenic as opposed to Iranian cultural traditions. We must not for-
get, either, that both empires laid claim to universal dominion and
only grudgingly (and provisionally) recognized the other as its
equal— an attitude that had very deep roots, going back at least as far
as the clash between the Persians and Alexander the Great in the
fourth century B.C.E.

This rivalry, on the political, cultural, and economic planes at
least, went back to early Roman times and was played out through-
out the Near East, including (as discussed below) the Arabian penin-
sula. It manifested itself in periodic diplomatic maneuvering be-
tween the two powers in an attempt to secure political allegiance
and cultural and economic advantage in those border areas that the
empires did not already rule directly or did not wish to bother to rule
directly, such as Arabia.

Rivalry over trade was a significant component of this contest.
Chinese silk, Indian cotton, pepper and other spices, South Arabian
incense, leather (heavily in demand by the imperial armies), and
other commodities had been important items of trade for the
Romans, who had even established commercial colonies in South
India, and they continued to be important for the Byzantines. Silk,
in particular, was prized and came via the routes known collectively
as I he famous “Silk Road” through Central Asia and Iran to the

24

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Mediterranean. Goods from the Indian Ocean could reach Byzantine
territory either through the Persian Gulf and the Tigris-Euphrates
valley or via the Red Sea. The Sasanians, who had extensive com-
mercial contacts of their own in the Indian Ocean basin and who
may have maintained commercial colonies in India, were keen to
monopolize the flow of eastern luxury goods into Byzantine territory
in order to levy taxes on them. A recurring feature of Byzantine-
Sasanian peace agreements was the establishment of official cus-
toms stations where goods were required to cross the border.

Frequently, the two empires grew impatient with diplomacy and
engaged in a long series of wars that were very costly to both sides. In
particular, between 500 c.E. and the collapse of the Sasanian state in
the 630s, the Byzantines and Sasanians fought five wars and were at
war almost continuously for the final ninety years of that period, pe-
riodically trading control of key border areas, such as northern Mes-
opotamia and parts of Armenia and the Caucasus. The last of these
wars (603-629) involved unusually dramatic shifts of fortune for
both sides and was part of the immediate background against which
Muhammad and his Believers’ movement first appeared.

This final Byzantine-Sasanian war began shortly after the Byzan-
tine emperor Maurice was murdered by the usurper Phocas in a
military coup in 602. This event elicited a swift reaction from Great
King Khosro II. Khosro either saw it as an opportunity to take advan-
tage of a moment of Byzantine disarray or to exact revenge for Mau-
rice, who, in 591, had helped him regain the Sasanian throne from a
military usurper in Ctesiphon in exchange for border concessions in
Armenia and Mesopotamia. In any case, beginning in 603, Khosro
launched a series of attacks against Byzantine positions in Mesopota-
mia and Armenia and by the end of the decade had brought all lands
up to the Euphrates firmly under Sasanian control.

Meanwhile, an internal rebellion against Phocas was building in
the Byzantine Empire, led by the governor of North Africa and his
son Heraclius. This led to widespread unrest and eventually the fall

I 'lic Near East on the Eve of Islam

25

<>l I’hocas as Heraclius was proclaimed emperor in Constantinople
in 610. Khosro took advantage of this unrest to press his assault on
I lie Byzantines further; he may have been aiming to finish them off
completely. Sasanian forces crossed northern Syria to the Mediter-
ranean coast, seized Antioch, and used this as a base to push into
Anatolia to the north and Syria to the south. Between 610 and 616,
all of Syria and Palestine was occupied and Persian garrisons in-
stalled in the major cities. Jerusalem, where the Persians appear to
have been supported by the local Jews, was captured in 614, many
citizens were massacred, and fragments of the True Cross, a relic of
unequalled symbolic significance, were carried off to Ctesiphon.
farther to the south, Egypt, a key provider of grain for Constantino-
ple, was seized by the Sasanians between 617 and 619. In the north,
meanwhile, Sasanian armies from Syria had seized Cappadocia and
its main center, Caesarea (modern Kayseri), while another army
marched from Armenia as far as Galatia (around modern Ankara).
By 621, fully half of Anatolia, the traditional heartland of the Byzan-
line Empire, was in Sasanian hands, as well as all of the Caucasus,
Armenia, Syria, and Egypt; to make matters worse, Khosro had con-
cluded an alliance with the chief of the nomadic Avars, who were
simultaneously attacking Constantinople from the northwest.

The survival of the Byzantine Empire, which under the circum-
stances must be considered almost miraculous, can be attributed to
I leraclius’s determination and to his skill and daring as military com-
mander and diplomat— and also, perhaps, to the magnificent defen-
sive walls of Constantinople, which withstood a siege by the Avars in
I lie summer of 626, when Heraclius and his army were campaigning
lar away. Despite renewed challenges from the Avars and stiff Sasa-
iikiii opposition, he rallied the Byzantine troops to save the Chris-
tian empire and to restore the True Cross to Jerusalem, perhaps the
lu si instance of a religiously legitimized imperial war. In 624 he
marched his armies through central Anatolia into Armenia and the
( Caucasus; it may have helped that Heraclius’s family was itself of

26

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Byzantine frontiers, ca. 600 CE —

Byzantine lands lost to Sasanians, 61 0-628

Sasanian offensives, 610-620 ►

Heraclius’s campaigns, 624-628

Map 2. The last Byzantine-Sasanian War, ca. 610-628 c.e.
{Adapted from W. Kaegi, Heraclius ,)

Armenian origin. There he made contact with the Sasanians’ steppe
enemy, the Turks, and with their assistance broke the Sasanian grip
on this strategically important region, which was nearly in the Sasa-
nians’ backyard. In 625 he further consolidated his control over
Anatolia. In the autumn and winter of 627-628, Heraclius marched
his army into northern Mesopotamia and then toward the Sasanian
capital, Ctesiphon. His unexpected raid into the heartland of the
empire caused Khosro to lose support at court, and the great king
was overthrown in a coup early in 628; his successor (Khosro’s son

The Near East on the Eve of Islam

27

Kavad II, ruled 628-629) sued for peace and ordered the withdrawal
of remaining Sasanian forces from Anatolia, Armenia, Syria, and
Egypt. By 629 the Sasanians had withdrawn behind new borders,
which left the Byzantines in control of all of their former possessions
as well as Armenia and northern Mesopotamia. The Sasanians en-
tered a prolonged period of political instability, with numerous pre-
tenders, including two Sasanian princesses, vying for the throne over
the next decade. Heraclius triumphantly restored the relic of the True
Cross to Jerusalem in 630, but after more than a decade of Sasanian
rule, the Byzantine political infrastructure in Syria and Egypt was
shaken, and many towns and communities had become used to mak-
ing their own decisions.

These dramatic events, then, which left both great empires in a
weakened state after decades of war, formed the wider background
against which the career of Muhammad took place in Arabia.

Arabia between the Great Powers

Arabia was wedged between the two great empires on their south-
ern desert edges. It is a vast and overwhelmingly arid land, extend-
ing in the north into the edges of the modern countries of Jordan,
Syria, and Iraq. Much of Arabia consists of sandy or, more com-
monly, rocky desert— the main exceptions being the Yemen in the
Arabian deep south and parts of Oman in the southeast, which are
blessed with some moisture from the Indian Ocean and water from
mountain springs. Elsewhere, rainfall is scant and irregular. For
the most part, adequate water for agriculture can be found only
where artesian wells bring underground water to the surface, form-
ing an oasis with groves of palm trees, amid which crops of cereals,
fruits, and vegetables could be raised. Most Arabian oases are small,
but a few large oasis towns can be found in northern and eastern
Arabia: in the north, Palmyra (actually in Syria), Azraq (in Jordan),

28

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Dumat al-Jandal, Tayma, Khaybar, and Yathrib (Medina); and in
the east, al-Yamama (modern Riyadh), Hajar (modern al-Hasa),
and Ha’il.

The Yemen, being fairly well watered, supported the rise of more
highly developed forms of political organization than the rest of Ara-
bia. Several early South Arabian kingdoms, which thrived in the first
millennium b.c.e.— Saba5 (Sheba), Ma'in, Qataban, Hadramawt—
eventually gave way to an even larger polity, the kingdom of Himyar,
which dominated most of Yemen from the first to the sixth centu-
ries C.E.

In most of Arabia, however, the meager agricultural resources
meant that the social and political order was structured around fam-
ily and kinship groups (“tribes”) that bound people together in soli-
darity and mutual defense. (Indeed, even in South Arabia the king-
dom was only a thin veneer over an essentially tribal society.) There

The Near East on the Eve of Islam

29

Bar’an Temple, Ma’rib. The ancient South Arabian kingdoms constructed
large shrines such as this one to their various astral deities.

was no “law” in the sense we understand it; rather, an individual’s
tribe or extended family provided him or her with day-to-day secu-
rity, because any affront to a member of the tribe, particularly a
homicide, would bring rapid retaliation against the offender’s tribe.
Both settled and nomadic people organized themselves this way; in-
deed, many groups had both settled and nomadic sections within
one and the same tribe.

Arabia’s political and social fragmentation was matched by its reli-
gious diversity on the eve of Islam. The traditional religion of Arabia
was polytheism— a paganism that revered astral deities (the sun,
moon, Venus, and so on), among others, and which existed in numer-
ous variants as local cults, late survivals of the pagan religions of the
ancient Near East. This local polytheism was peculiarly well suited to
the Arabian social environment, for Arabian tribes not only consid-
ered themselves blood relatives (whether or not they actually were),
they also usually joined in worshipping a particular local idol or god,

30

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

whom they considered their divine protector, so that their social iden-
tity also had a religious component. These Arabian gods were hon-
ored at local shrines, called harams, often centered on a sacred tree,
rock, spring, or other feature, which the deity was thought to inhabit.
The haram consisted of a sacred area with definite boundaries around
the shrine proper, in which it was forbidden for members of the cult
to engage in bloodshed or violence— a ban that was enforced by the
other groups that worshipped the same deity and by the family or
tribe that served as the shrines caretakers. This feature made the
haram a place where people from different tribes could mingle safely,
whether to visit a marketplace, to settle outstanding quarrels, or to
arrange marriages and alliances. If there was sufficient water, a haram
thus grew into a sizable settlement, because it tended to attract as set-
tlers merchants and others for whom security of property was essen-
tial. Most of the larger towns of northern Arabia had a haram at their
core— as well as a good supply of fresh water.

By the sixth century c.e., however, this residual Arabian paganism
was apparently receding in the face of a gradual spread of monothe-
ism. Judaism had come to Arabia very early— probably immediately
after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in
70 C.E. Communities of Arabic-speaking Jews were found in most parts
of Arabia, particularly in the Yemen and in the oasis towns of north-
western Arabia— Tabuk, Tayma5, Khaybar, Yathrib (Medina), and so
on. These may have been descendants of Jewish migrants or refugees
from Palestine or Babylonia, local converts, or an amalgam of both.
Christianity was also found in Arabia, especially in Yemen (where
it had become established in the fourth century through Byzantine
proselytizing), in eastern Arabia, and on Arabia’s northern fringes
bordering on Syria and Iraq, where it seems to have gained a fol-
lowing even among some pastoral nomadic groups. There is less
agreement among scholars on the prevalence of Christians in the
Hijaz (the mountainous western side of Arabia), although some stray
references show that Christians were not unknown there. Arabia

The Near East on the Eve of Islam

31

may also have been home to some communities of Jewish Christians
called Nazoreans, who recognized Jesus as messiah but adhered to
bans on consuming pork and wine. We have, unfortunately, very lit-
tle firsthand information about these diverse Jewish and Christian
communities in the sixth century. It seems plausible to suppose, how-
ever, that they were affected by the tendencies to asceticism and apoc-
alypticism that were current in the wider Near Eastern world at that
time.

A final aspect of religious life in Arabia that is worthy of mention
is the survival there of the tradition of active prophecy, even though
by the sixth century it had largely died out elsewhere in the Near
East. Although by that time mainstream Jews and many Christians
considered active prophecy to be a thing of the past, prophecy con-
tinued to be practiced by a few groups like the Montanists, a small
Christian sect found mainly in Asia Minor. The religious teacher
Mani, founder of Manichaeism, who lived in southern Iraq during
the third century C.E., also claimed to have been a prophet. At the
time of Muhammad s preaching in the early seventh century, more-
over, there were a number of other figures in Arabia who, like him,
presented themselves as prophets bearing a divine message. All of
this points to the vitality of the tradition of active prophecy, particu-
larly in Arabia, and helps us understand the way in which people in
Arabia may have received Muhammad’s claims to be a prophet.

For both political and economic reasons, the Byzantines and
Sasanians felt a need to maintain a presence in Arabia— if only to
thwart the other from gaining too much influence there. Yet, the
dearth of resources in northern Arabia discouraged them from try-
ing to establish direct control over this area, for it would have cost
more to garrison and administer it than they could hope to secure in
taxes. Instead, they adopted the stratagem of establishing alliances
with the chiefs of Arabian tribes, who then served the empires’ inter-
ests in exchange for cash subsidies, weapons, and titles; such indirect
rule was much cheaper, in money and men, than trying to control

32

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

the area directly with their own troops. The Sasanians established
such an alliance with the “kings” of the Nasrid family of the tribe of
Lakhm, whose base was al-Hira in lower Iraq; the Nasrids contrib-
uted troops to the Sasanian army and proved a thorn in the side of
the Byzantines because of their periodic raids against Byzantine
Syria. The Sasanians also had alliances with other chieftains along
the Arabian coasts of the Persian Gulf. In northern Oman, they not
only allied themselves with the local rulers, the Julandas, but estab-
lished a more direct presence, appointing a Sasanian governor, with
a permanent garrison of Sasanian troops based in Rustaq, to keep an
eye on this region of strategic and agricultural importance. The
Sasanians thus cast a large shadow over the gulf coasts of Arabia in
the late antique period.

The Byzantines pursued a similar policy in northwest Arabia. The
chiefs of the Jafnid family of the tribe of Ghassan, who resided at
al-Jabiya in the Jawlan plateau overlooking Lake Tiberias, were recog-
nized by the Byzantine emperors as “phylarchs,” or tribal affiliates of
the empire during the sixth century, and were outfitted with weap-
ons and cash as well as with titles. Other tribes had, in earlier centu-
ries, played the same role. Like their Sasanian counterparts the
Nasrids, the Jafnids gave military assistance to their imperial patrons
and participated in a number of major Roman campaigns against
the Sasanians and even once (570) attacked the Nasrid capital at al-
Hira in central Iraq. When not engaged in open hostilities, the Nas-
rid and Jafnid clients of the two empires were special rivals for influ-
ence among the nomadic people and oasis settlements of northern
Arabia and served generally as agents of Sasanian and Byzantine in-
terests. In particular, the Jafnids were expected to prevent other no-
madic groups on the fringes of Byzantine Syria from raiding or
plundering settled communities in taxable districts.

There is some evidence that mining of gold and other ores may
have contributed to the economic vitality of the Arabian peninsula
in the century before the rise of Islam. Recent work suggests, however,

I 'he Near East on the Eve of Islam

33

that Arabia’s main resource of interest to the empires may have been
leather, which was used by their armies for saddles, harnesses, boots,
shields, tents, and other equipment.

Arabia was also significant economically because it lay on the
Byzantines’ path to the Indian Ocean basin and its rich commerce.
Indian cotton, pepper and other spices, South Arabian incense, and
other commodities came to the Mediterranean world either on ships
that traveled sea routes that skirted Arabia and called at its ports—
particularly Muza (Mocha) and Kane, in South Arabia— or by cara-
van through the towns of western Arabia, including Mecca. In the
Red Sea, a good part of this sea trade was carried in Byzantine
times by Axumite shippers hailing from their main port, Adulis.
The Byzantine and Sasanian empires both aspired to control this
commerce and the taxes that they could collect on it, with the result
that Arabia became a focus of serious competition between the em-
pires. The Byzantines, for example, maintained a customs station on
the island of Iotabe in the straits of Tiran (at the mouth of the Gulf
of Aqaba), and a few stray reports hint that both the Byzantines and
the Sasanians attempted, and perhaps succeeded, in establishing
special ties with local leaders to collect taxes in Yathrib or Mecca on
the eve of Islam in an effort to draw this region into their spheres of
influence.

Yemen became a special focus of this Byzantine-Sasanian compe-
tition, partly for religious reasons and partly because it occupied a
particularly pivotal place in their rivalry over Arabian trade. During
the first three-quarters of the sixth century, the Byzantines exercised
some indirect influence in Yemen, which, though distant (3,500 km,
or 2,175 mi, from Constantinople), was their direct gateway to the
Indian Ocean via the Red Sea. For the Byzantines, this route had
the advantage of circumventing the Sasanians, who sat astride the
other trade routes to the Indian Ocean basin and East Asia, which
passed either through Iran— the famous “Silk Road”— or, via the
Persian Gulf, through Iraq.

34

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

The Byzantine political presence in Yemen was mainly estab-
lished through the intermediary of their ally, the Christian king-
dom of Axum. On the urging of the Byzantine emperor Justin, the
Axumite king Ella Asbeha invaded Yemen around 523 C.E. and es-
tablished a Christian ruler there. This invasion may have been in
part a reaction to the activities of a Jewish king of the Himyarites,
Dhu Nuwas, who had just beforehand engaged in a series of bloody
clashes with Yemenite Christians, or it may have been mainly in
order to facilitate Byzantine commerce with India. This Ethio-
pian regime in Yemen, which soon became independent of Axum,
dominated the country for a half-century; its most important
leader was the king Abraha, who attempted to extend his rule into
north-central Arabia and is reported by tradition to have mounted
an unsuccessful siege on Mecca around the time of Muhammad’s
birth.

The Sasanians were not about to allow this indirect Byzantine
presence in South Arabia to stand unchallenged, however. In the
570s, Great King Khosro II sent an expeditionary force that occu-
pied Yemen and made it a province of the empire, administered di-
rectly by a Sasanian governor with a strong garrison. By the end of
the sixth century, then, the Sasanians had enclosed Arabia almost
completely on its eastern and southern sides; only the Red Sea litto-
ral and its extension into southern Syria was free of their control. The
Byzantine Empire, on the other hand, was especially influential in
northwestern Arabia.

Mecca and Yathrib (Medina)

The two towns where Muhammad spent his life, Mecca and Yathrib
(later usually called Medina), were about 325 km (200 mi) apart from
one another in the rugged region known as the Hijaz in western
Arabia. The two towns were very different from one another. Yathrib

I'he Near East on the Eve of Islam

35

was a typical large date-palm oasis, actually a loose cluster of con-
tiguous villages, with mud-brick houses and fields of barley and
other crops scattered under and between the date groves that grew
around perennial springs. In each village or quarter was one or more
mud-brick towers ( atam ; singular, utm) to which the villagers could
repair if threatened by robbers or hostile nomads. In Muhammad’s
day the residents of Yathrib were from several different tribes or
clans. The original inhabitants of the oasis seem to have been from
upward of a dozen Jewish families or clans, among which the clans
of Qaynuqa’, Nadir, and Qurayza were especially prominent. Many
of these were farmers and held rich lands, but others— such as the
Qaynuqa’, who were goldsmiths— engaged in trade or artisanship.
By Muhammad’s time in the late sixth century, however, the town
was dominated by roughly ten clans of pagans (polytheists), who had
settled in Yathrib several generations earlier and lived mainly from
agriculture. Among these, the clans of Aws and Khazraj were the
most powerful and engaged in sometimes bitter rivalry and feuds for
leadership of the town, struggles in which the Jewish tribes were
closely involved.

Mecca, on the other hand, was not an oasis town and had very
little agricultural potential. The well of Zamzam did provide suffi-
cient freshwater for drinking and for small garden plots, but the
town’s location in stony hills did not permit extensive cultivation,
and in Muhammad’s day some of its staple foodstuffs were imported
from elsewhere in Arabia or from Syria. Mecca owed its prominence
not to cultivation but to religious cult and commerce: It was a typical
Arabian haram in which violence and bloodshed were forbidden. At
the center of the town was the shrine called the Ka'ba— a large, cubi-
cal building with a sacred black stone affixed in one corner— that
was the sanctuary to the pagan god Hubal. The custodians of this
shrine belonged to the tribe of Quraysh, whose different clans made
up most of the population of Mecca and shared the various cult
responsibilities, such as providing water and food to the pilgrims,

36

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

An Arabian oasis. This photograph of the oasis of Jabrin, in Oman, conveys
some idea of the general appearance of palm oases such as Yathrib, with
houses of mud-brick and garden plots scattered loosely among large groves
of date palms.

preparing and selling special pilgrimage garb, and supervising par-
ticular rituals. People from other tribes, particularly pastoral nomads
who lived near Mecca, also joined its cult, sometimes bringing their
own idols into the shrine for safekeeping.

The tribe of Quraysh in Mecca were also heavily involved in com-
merce and organized caravans that carried goods between Mecca
and trading centers in Yemen, eastern Arabia, and southern Syria,
and they doubtless had contact with Axumite shippers as well. They
also participated in an annual trade fair held at a place called cUkaz,
near Mecca, at which merchants from many parts of Arabia gath-
ered. It was once thought that Mecca was the center of a booming
trade in luxury items from east Africa, India, and Yemen, such as
ivory, slaves, and spices, but work since the 1970s reveals that much
of the trade was in more modest staple commodities such as ani-

37

The Ka'ba in Mecca. Although the structures around the Ka'ba had been
rebuilt numerous times over the centuries, this photo from the late nine-
teenth century may give some idea of what the shrine looked like in the
early Islamic centuries, before the tremendous expansions and rebuildings
of the second half of the twentieth century.

mal hides and basic foodstuffs. The presence of gold mines in the
Hijaz suggests that there may also have been some trade in this pre-
cious metal. Whatever commodities were involved, Mecca’s com-
mercial activity seems to have drawn people from outside Mecca
into the town’s cult, so that by the later years of the sixth century,
when Muhammad was growing up in Mecca, its haram seems to
have become one of the most important shrines among the many
in western Arabia, and its custodians, Muhammad’s tribe of Quraysh,
had considerable experience in organization and management of
joint commercial ventures and a network of contacts throughout

38

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Arabia. It was in this environment of modest commercial activity
and diverse religious ideas coming from both Arabian paganism
and from the monotheistic traditions of the wider Near East that
Muhammad ibn 'Abdullah, the prophet of Islam, was born and
raised.

Muhammad and the
Believers' Movement

Islamic tradition provides a richly detailed narrative of the life of
Muhammad, the man all Muslims recognize as their prophet. This
narrative is not contemporary but, rather, based on reports that were
circulated and collected within the Muslim community during the
several centuries following Muhammad’s death. As this chapter ex-
plores in more detail, these reports contain material of many kinds.
Some of them appear to be sober recountings of events, based ulti-
mately on the testimony of eyewitnesses. Others offer miracle stories or
improbable idealizations and seem to belong to the realm of legend
or religious apologetic. The following pages present, first, a very con-
densed summary of the traditional biography of Muhammad, setting
aside those reports that are clearly legendary. Thereafter, we will discuss
some of the problems of this traditional picture and offer an alternative
reading of Muhammad s life that takes these problems into account.

The Traditional Biography of Muhammad the Prophet

According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah was born
in the West Arabian town of Mecca in the second half of the sixth

40

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

century c.E. (some reports say around 570, but different accounts
give different dates). He belonged to the clan of Hashim within the
tribe of Quraysh that dominated Mecca. He was orphaned at an
early age and subsequently raised to adulthood by his paternal uncle,
Abu Talib, who was at this time the chief of the Hashim clan.

As discussed earlier, in Muhammad’s day Mecca was a town
whose inhabitants were heavily involved in two activities: com-
merce and religion. The caravans organized by Quraysh, and the
participation of Quraysh in various trading fairs, brought them into
contact with other tribes and communities throughout Arabia. The
Quraysh tribe’s role as stewards of Mecca’s religious rituals, cen-
tered on the Kacba and other holy sites around Mecca, also gave
them contacts with many groups who came to the Ka'ba to do their
devotions there, particularly by performing ritual circumambula-
tions in the open area surrounding it. The security that came with
Mecca’s status as a haram was obviously good for commerce, so
Quraysh’s dual roles, as merchants and stewards of the shrine, were
intimately intertwined.

As a young man, Muhammad entered into the commercial and
cultic life of Mecca. He married a well-to-do widow, Khadija, who
was some years older than he, and managed her caravan trading
ventures. As he entered maturity, he became highly esteemed by his
fellow tribesmen of Quraysh for his intelligence, honesty, and tact-
fulness. He also began to feel a periodic need for meditation and
took to secluding himself now and then in order to contemplate his
life. According to tradition, it was during such a personal retreat,
around 610, that Muhammad first began to receive revelations from
God, carried to him by the archangel Gabriel. The revelations came
to him as intense sounds and visions that so overcame him that he
could only lie on the ground, shaking and perspiring, until they
were over, after which the words that had been revealed to him were
burned indelibly into his memory. These words were eventually writ-
ten down by his followers and edited together to form the Qur’an

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

41

(Koran), Islam’s sacred scripture— which is, thus, literally a transcrip-
tion of the spoken word of God in the view of believing Muslims.

Muhammad was at first terrified by what he had experienced and
reluctant to take up the mantle of prophecy that God had thrust on
him; but his religious experiences continued and it became clear to
him that he could not evade this responsibility. He was also com-
forted by his wife Khadija, who accepted the veracity of his experi-
ences and so became the first person to believe in his prophetic
calling. Muhammad then began to preach publicly the message that
was being revealed to him: the oneness of God, the reality of the
Last Judgment, and the need for pious and God-fearing behavior.
Gradually he began to win the support of some people, who abjured
their pagan beliefs and recognized instead the absolute oneness of
God and Muhammad’s role as a prophet. Some of his earliest follow-
ers were close kinsmen, such as his cousin ‘All, son of Abu Talib, and
Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, possibly a relative of Muhammad’s mother.
Other early followers seem to have been people from the weaker
clans of Quraysh and of marginal social groups. A number of promi-
nent Meccans also became early adherents to his message, and many
of these came to play central roles in the later life of the community.
Notable among them were two men: Abu Bakr, a merchant of the
clan of Taym, who became Muhammad’s closest confidant; and Abu
Bakr's kinsman Talha ibn ‘Ubaydallah. Others included ‘Uthman
ibn ‘Affan, a very wealthy member of the powerful clan of Umayya,
whose generosity was often put at the prophet’s service and who mar-
ried the prophet’s daughters Ruqayya and (after the former’s death)
Umm Kulthum; and 'Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Awf of the clan of Zuhra
and Zubayr ibn al-‘Awwam of the clan of Asad. All of these people
would play pivotal roles in the events following Muhammad’s death.

Many tribesmen of Quraysh were shocked or disturbed by Mu-
hammad’s attack on their ancestral polytheism, the “faith of their
fathers,” and subjected him and his followers first to ridicule and
then to more serious abuse. For a time he was sheltered from this by

42

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

the resolute support of Abu Talib, who, as his uncle and head of the
clan of Hashim, stood firm in protecting Muhammad. Even a boy-
cott of Hashim by other clans of Quraysh, organized particularly by
“Abu Jahl” (the name may be pejorative— “Father of Folly”), chief of
the powerful clan of Makhzum, did not cause Abu Talib to hand
Muhammad to them as they wished. However, Muhammad’s situa-
tion in Mecca was becoming increasingly precarious, and a number
of his followers reportedly took refuge at this time with the Christian
king of Abyssinia to escape persecution.

Muhammad’s position in Mecca deteriorated rapidly after the
deaths, in close succession, of both Khadija and Abu Talib, his main
sources of emotional and social support. Abu Talib was succeeded as
head of the Hashim by another of Muhammad’s uncles, “Abu La-
hab” (perhaps another pejorative— “Father of Flame”), but the latter
was not supportive of his nephew and after a time withdrew his pro-
tection. This happened probably around 619 c.E. Realizing that most
of Quraysh would not soon be won over, Muhammad began to
preach his message at periodic markets outside Mecca in order to
find other supporters. Initially he met with little success, and he was
rebuffed by the leaders of the town of al-Ta’if, about 100 km (about
60 mi) west of Mecca. Around that time, however, he was contacted
by a small group of men from the town of Yathrib, a cluster of date-
palm oases situated about 325 km (200 mi) north of Mecca. As dis-
cussed earlier, Yathrib had long been torn by political strife between
the Aws and the Khazraj, rival clans of its dominant tribe, the Banu
Qayla. Yathrib s three major Jewish clans, the Nadir, Qurayza, and
Qaynuqa’, may also have been involved in this strife. The people of
Yathrib who sought out Muhammad were yearning for someone to
reunify and heal their town; they were impressed by Muhammad’s
message and embraced it, promising to return to the fair the follow-
ing year with more people. The next year, a larger group met with
Muhammad and invited him to come to Yathrib with his Meccan
supporters so that they could establish themselves there as a new

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

43

community dedicated to living and worshipping as God demanded,
without interference. Shortly thereafter, in 622 C.E., Muhammad and
his followers from Mecca made their hijra (“emigration” or “taking
refuge”) to Yathrib— which I will henceforth refer to by its later name,
Medina (from madinat al-nabi, “city of the prophet”). Muhammad's
hijra to Medina, because it came to be considered the inception of a
politically independent community of Believers, was adopted within
a few years of Muhammad’s death as marking the beginning of the
Islamic calendar (AH 1). The Meccans who had made hijra with
Muhammad were called muhajirun, “Emigrants,” while the Medi-
nese who received them came to be known as ansar, “Helpers.”

Traditional accounts describe Muhammad’s life in Medina in
great detail, informing us of some events of a personal nature, such
as his numerous marriages and the births (and deaths) of his chil-
dren. Particularly noteworthy among these personal matters was his
marriage to the young ‘A’isha, daughter of his stalwart supporter Abu
Bakr (whom Islamic tradition remembers as his favorite wife of the
fifteen or so he eventually took). Also important was his close rela-
tionship with his cousin ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, one of the first to follow
his message, who married Muhammad’s own daughter Fatima. The
traditional sources also emphasize Muhammad’s founding in Me-
dina of an independent community, including many notices about
how he established ritual practices and laid down social guidelines
and legal principles for the new community.

But above all the traditional narratives describe the course of
Muhammad’s political activities in Medina, which by the end of his
life resulted in the creation of an autonomous political community that
we can consider an embryonic state. There are two grand themes of
this process. One is the story of Muhammad’s consolidation of political
power over Medina itself, which posed a number of distinct challenges
to him. These included occasional tensions between the muhajirun
and the ansar, stubborn opposition by some Medinese (called mu-
nafiqun, “hypocrites”), lukewarm supporters who seem to have worked

44

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

against him behind the scenes, and his troubled relations— at once reli-
gious, social, and political— with Medinas Jews. The second grand
theme of Muhammad’s political life in Medina is the story of his pro-
longed but ultimately victorious struggle with his former hometown,
Mecca, and with those members of Quraysh who had resisted his
preaching, led now by Abu Sufyan, the new chief of the clan of
Umayya. Clearly related to these two themes is a third, the story of his
struggle to win the support of pastoral nomadic groups that resided in
the vicinity of Medina and, as time went on, with nomadic and settled
communities farther afield. They were to prove a crucial component in
his construction of a victorious coalition in western Arabia.

Early in his stay in Yathrib/Medina, Muhammad concluded
an agreement (or first in a series of agreements) with various clans of
the town. This established mutual obligations between him and the
Quraysh Emigants on the one hand and Medinese Helpers on the
other, including the Jewish clans affiliated with the latter, binding
them all together as belonging to a single community ( umma ). We
can, following several recent authors, call this agreement the “umma
document.” It has many remarkable features, some of which we will
discuss more fully below, but in general it established guidelines for
cooperation of the various groups in Medina, including mutual re-
sponsibilities in times of war, the payment of blood money and ran-
soming of prisoners, and above all, the parties’ commitment to sup-
port one another in times of conflict. (See Appendix A for the full text
of the umma document.)

Immediately after his arrival in Medina, according to tradition,
Muhammad and his followers are said to have marked out a place for
collective prayer— the first mosque. (The English word is derived
from Arabic masjid, “place for prostrations”— pronounced mesgid in
some Arabic dialects— via Spanish mezquita and French mosquee.)
At first Muhammad and his Believers faced toward Jerusalem in
prayer, as the Jews did, but after some time Muhammad ordered that
the Believers should conduct prayers facing Mecca instead. This

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

45

change of qibla (prayer orientation), which is mentioned in the rev-
elation (Q. 2:142-145), may reflect Muhammad’s deteriorating rela-
I ions with the town’s Jews, who according to traditional sources were
lor the most part not won over to his movement.

One source of Muhammad’s difficulties with Medina’s Jews, who
controlled one of Medina’s main markets, may have been his desire to
establish a new market in Medina to assist the Meccan Emigrants. In
spite of this, some of the Emigrants, uprooted from their livelihoods
and cut off from the bulk of the network of close kinsmen that would
have sustained them at home in Mecca, soon found themselves on the
verge of destitution, and there was only so much that the Medinese
I lelpers could do for them. In desperation, Muhammad sent a few
Emigrants out as a raiding party, which ambushed a Mecca-bound
caravan at the town of Nakhla. The booty gained was welcome, but
the Nakhla raid opened a long struggle between Muhammad and
Quraysh and aroused much criticism even among some of his sup-
porters, because it was undertaken during one of the sacred months,
when by local tradition violence was supposed to be forbidden— a con-
troversy resolved (among Muhammad’s followers, at least) only by the
arrival of a Quranic revelation justifying it (Q. 2:217).

TEXT OF QUR’AN 2 (BAQARA/THE COW): 217

They ask you about fighting in the sacred months. Say: fighting in it
is a serious [sin], but barring [people] from the way of God, and dis-
belief in Him and in the sacred mosque, and expelling its people
from it are more serious in God’s eyes. Spreading discord is more se-
rious than killing. They will continue to fight you until they turn you
from your religion, if they can. Whoever of you turns back from his
religion and dies an unbeliever— their works in this world and the
next are to no avail, and they are the companions of the fire, they
shall be in it eternally.

46

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

A larger group of Muhammad’s followers attacked a sizable
Quraysh caravan again at a place called Badr (year 2/624), overcom-
ing the contingent of Meccans guarding it and taking much booty
despite being outnumbered. This victory must have strengthened
both the morale and the economic position of Muhammad’s follow-
ers and may mark the beginning of a virtual blockade of Mecca by
Muhammad and the Medinese. It also evidently left Muhammad
feeling secure enough to make the first open attack on Jews who op-
posed him. A Jewish leader who had mocked him was murdered by
Muhammad’s followers; then the important Jewish clan of Qaynuqa’,
who ran Medina’s main market, were besieged in their quarter and
ultimately, after negotiations, expelled from the city, leaving behind
most of their property, which was taken over by Muhamad’s follow-
ers. The Qaynuqa’ withdrew to Wadi al-Qura, north of Medina, and
then to Syria.

After their defeat at Badr, the Meccans were more determined
than ever to settle scores with Muhammad and his followers. After
trading small raids with him, they organized an alliance that at-
tacked Medina itself. In this clash, called the battle of Uhud (3/625),
Muhammad’s forces suffered defeat and loss of life. Muhammad
himself was slightly wounded, but the Meccan alliance came apart
on the brink of victory and had to withdraw, leaving Muhammad
and his followers shaken but still standing. Following Uhud, the two
sides again traded raids, particularly to thwart each other’s attempts
to win support among nomadic tribes living nearby. Some of these
raids were successful for the Medinese; others, such as that against a
place called Bi’r Ma'una, resulted in casualties. In his efforts to win
tribal allies, Muhammad sometimes had to allow a pagan tribe to
cling to its ancestral religion, but many of his allies also embraced
his message of monotheism. Muhammad took advantage of the with-
drawal of the Meccan forces to turn against a second major Jewish
group of Medina, the clan of Nadir, reportedly because some of them
had been plotting to kill Muhammad. His followers besieged the

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

47

Nadir, who eventually capitulated and withdrew, most of them going
to the largely Jewish oasis town of Khaybar, about 230 km (143 mi)
north of Medina.

The traditional sources place at this time a long-distance expedi-
tion by the Believers in Medina to the north Arabian oasis and trade
center at Dumat al-Jandal— fully 700 km (435 mi) north of Medina—
but whatever its goal was, it seems to have been inconclusive. More
important, Quraysh had once again organized an alliance, even
larger than the previous one, and launched another offensive, includ-
ing a contingent of cavalry, against Muhammad and Medina. In this
case, Muhammad and his followers reportedly dug a moat or trench
to neutralize the Meccans’ cavalry, forcing them to try to reduce
Medina by siege. The so-called battle of the Trench (5/627) involved
some skirmishing, but after several weeks the Meccan alliance once
again began to unravel and Quraysh were forced to withdraw. In this
case, too, Muhammad turned on his Jewish opponents in the after-
math of a major confrontation with Quraysh; this time the victims
were the last large Jewish clan of Medina, Qurayza, who are said to
have had treasonous contact with the Meccans during the siege of
Medina. Their fortifications in the city were surrounded by Muham-
mad’s followers, and when they surrendered, they agreed that a for-
mer ally of theirs in Muhammad’s following should pass judgment on
them. His judgment, however, was harsh: He ordered that the men
should be executed and the women and children enslaved.

Muhammad now dispatched envoys to various tribes around
Medina and further afield and organized several especially poorly
understood campaigns to destinations north of Medina— to Dumat
al-Jandal (again) and to the southern fringes of Syria, where his freed-
man Zayd ibn Haritha had gone on trade. Then, according to tradi-
tional sources, in 6/628, Muhammad and a large following marched
unarmed toward Mecca with the avowed intention of doing the
‘umra or “lesser pilgrimage,” which involved performing various
rites at the Kacba; the fact that they set out without weapons was

48

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

meant to confirm their peaceful intentions. Quraysh, however, were
in no mood to allow Muhammad and his followers to come into
their town unopposed, given the long hostilities between them and
the fact that Muhammad was still blocking the passage of Meccan
caravans. They therefore headed him off with a cordon of troops at a
place called Hudaybiya, on the borders of the haram around Mecca.
There, after lengthy negotiations, they concluded an agreement
with Muhammad: He would return to Medina without doing the
c umra and would end his blockade of Mecca in exchange for permis-
sion to perform the cumra unmolested in the following year. The two
parties also agreed to a ten-year truce, during which neither side was
to attack the other but each was free to make whatever contacts it
wished.

The Hudaybiya agreement seems to mark a turning point in
Muhammad’s fortunes. Shortly after concluding it, Muhammad or-
ganized a large expeditionary force and marched with it on the Jew-
ish oasis of Khaybar; this town had long been a key ally of Mecca in
its struggle with Muhammad, but it was not explicitly protected by
the agreement. Khaybar capitulated, but its Jewish residents were
allowed to remain in order to cultivate the town’s extensive groves of
palm trees, from the annual crop of which Muhammad now took a
share. Muhammad also launched, around this time, numerous raids
on still-unsubdued nomadic tribes and sent several raids to the
north. One of these, led (again) by Zayd ibn Haritha, penetrated into
southern Syria but was repulsed by local Byzantine forces at Mu’ta,
in what is today southern Jordan; Zayd was killed in this battle, but
most of the force returned intact. A year after the Hudaybiya agree-
ment, Muhammad and his followers made the ‘ umra as planned.
Around this time, those Believers who had many years before gone to
Abyssinia during Muhammad’s darkest days in Mecca finally returned
to join Muhammad in Medina. Presumably their decision to return
reflected Muhammad’s and his community’s increasingly secure
position in Medina.

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

49

The Hudaybiya agreement with Quraysh had been for a term of
ten years, but only two years later, in 8/630, Muhammad decided
that by various actions Quraysh had violated the terms of the agree-
ment. He therefore organized a large armed force (one report says it
numbered ten thousand, including perhaps two thousand nomadic
allies) and marched on Mecca. Quraysh capitulated without a fight
and agreed to embrace Muhammad’s message of monotheism; only
a handful of Muhammad’s bitterest opponents in Mecca were exe-
cuted, and indeed many Meccan leaders were given important posi-
tions in Muhammad’s entourage, a measure that dismayed some of
his early supporters, both Emigrants and Helpers. Once inside Mecca,
Muhammad set about removing from the confines of the Ka'ba
shrine its pagan idols, purifying it for its future role as a focus of
monotheist worship. In the view of Muslim tradition, the Ka'ba had
originally been built by Abraham as a shrine to the one God, so Mu-
hammad was by these actions merely rededicating it to its original
monotheistic purpose.

The conquest (really occupation) of Mecca was perhaps the
crowning event of Muhammad’s political career. But, although his
position was now incomparably stronger, he still faced some oppo-
sition. The tribe of Thaqif, which controlled the third major town
of western Arabia, Ta’if, had long had close ties to Mecca and
Quraysh and continued to reject Muhammad’s advances. Moreover,
Thaqif had as allies some powerful nomadic tribes in their vicinity,
such as Hawazin, who were particularly threatening. Shortly after
taking Mecca, therefore, Muhammad marched his forces against
Thaqif and their Hawazin allies and defeated them at the battle of
Hunayn, after which he surrounded Ta’if itself, which eventually
capitulated.

Muhammad was now unquestionably the dominant political fig-
ure in western Arabia, and in the year or so after Mecca and Ta’if
fell, he received delegations from numerous tribal groups in Arabia,
both settled and nomadic, who hastened to tender their allegiance to

50

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

him. He also organized at this time another major military expedi-
tion to the far north, this time directed against the town of Tabuk; its
exact goals remain unclear, but it showed Muhammad’s continued
interest in the north. Muhammad astutely used these late cam-
paigns as a way to secure the loyalty of those powerful leaders of
Quraysh who had formerly been his opponents, such as their for-
mer leader Abu Sufyan, and his sons Mu'awiya and Yazid, by giv-
ing them important commands or extra shares of booty. Moreover,
during these campaigns, he increasingly insisted that his able-bodied
followers take active part in military service. At this time, too, Mu-
hammad’s growing political and military strength enabled him to
dispense with the policy of making alliances with pagan tribes—
something that had been necessary earlier in order to secure as many
allies as possible in his struggle with Mecca. Now he announced a
new policy of noncooperation with polytheists; they were henceforth
to be attacked and forced to recognize God’s oneness or to fight. (See
Q. 9:1-16.)

At the end of 10/March 632, Muhammad is said to have performed
the hajj, or major pilgrimage, to the environs of Mecca. Shortly after
his return to Medina, he fell ill and, after several days, died at home,
his head cradled in the lap of his favorite wife, 'A’isha (11/632). Fol-
lowing local custom, his body was interred beneath the floor of his
house.

The Problem of Sources

This brief sketch of the events of Muhammad’s life, although in
many ways plausible (and probably in some respects accurate), is
nevertheless vexing to the historian. The problem is that this de-
tailed picture of Muhammad’s career is drawn not from documents
or even stories dating from Muhammad’s time, but from literary
sources that were compiled many years— sometimes centuries—

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

51

later. The fact that these sources are so much later, and shaped
with very specific objectives in mind, means that they often do not
tell us many things about which we would like to know more; for
example, the position of women in society is often reported only
incidentally. There is also reason to suspect that some— perhaps
many— of the incidents related in these sources are not reliable
accounts of things that actually happened but rather are legends
created by later generations of Muslims to affirm Muhammad’s
status as prophet, to help establish precedents shaping the later
Muslim community’s ritual, social, or legal practices, or simply to
fill out poorly known chapters in the life of their founder, about
whom, understandably, later Muslims increasingly wished to know
everything.

The vast ocean of traditional accounts from which the preced-
ing brief sketch of Muhammad’s life is distilled contains so many
contradictions and so much dubious storytelling that many histori-
ans have become reluctant to accept any of it at face value. There
are, for example, an abundance of miracle stories and other reports
that seem obviously to belong to the realm of legend, such as an
episode similar to the “feeding the multitudes” story in Christian
legends about Jesus. The chronology of this traditional material
about Muhammad, moreover, is not only vague and confused, but
also bears telltale signs of having been shaped by a concern for
numerological symbolism. For example, all the major events of
Muhammad’s life are said to have occurred on the same date and
day of the week (Monday, 12 Rabic al-awwal) in different years.
Further, some episodes that are crucial to the traditional biography
of Muhammad look suspiciously like efforts to create a historiciz-
ing gloss to particular verses of the Qur’an; some have suggested,
for example, that the reports of the raid on Nakhla were generated
as exegesis of Q. 2:217 (see “Text of Quran 2" Sidebar, p. 45). Other
elements of his life story may have been generated to make his bi-
ography conform to contemporary expectations of what a true

52

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

prophet would do (for instance, his orphanhood, paralleling that of
Moses, or his rejection by and struggle against his own people, the
tribe of Quraysh).

Even if we accept the basic outlines of Muhammad’s life as por-
trayed in traditional accounts, the historian is faced with many
stubborn questions that the sources leave unaddressed. (For exam-
ple, why were the pagans of Medina so readily won over to Mu-
hammad’s message, while the Quraysh of Mecca resisted it so bit-
terly? What exactly was Muhammad’s original status in Medina?
What exactly was his relationship to the Jews of Medina?) Unfortu-
nately, we have no original documents that might confirm un-
equivocally any of the traditional biography— no original copies of
letters to or from or about Muhammad by his contemporaries, no
inscriptions from his day written by members of his community, and
so on.

These well-founded concerns about the limitations of the tradi-
tional Muslim accounts of Muhammad’s life have caused some
scholars to conclude that everything in these accounts is to be re-
jected. This, however, is surely going too far and in its way is just as
uncritical an approach as unquestioning acceptance of everything in
the traditional accounts. The truth must lie somewhere in between;
and some recent work has begun to show that despite the vexing
problems they pose, the traditional narratives do seem to contain
some very early material about the life of Muhammad. A tolerably
accurate and plausible account of the main events of Muhammad’s
life may someday be possible, when scholars learn more about how
to sift the mass of traditional materials more effectively. However,
such critical studies are just getting underway today, and for the pres-
ent it remains prudent to utilize the traditional narratives sparingly
and with caution.

Our situation as historians interested in Muhammad’s life and the
nature of his message is far from hopeless, however. A few seventh-
century non-Muslim sources, from a slightly later time than that of

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

53

Muhammad himself but much earlier than any of the traditional
Muslim compilations, provide testimony that— although not strictly
documentary in character— appears to be essentially reliable. Al-
though these sources are few and provide very limited information,
they are nonetheless invaluable. For example, an early Syriac source
by the Christian writer Thomas the Presbyter, dated to around 640—
that is, just a few years after Muhammad’s death— provides the earli-
est mention of Muhammad and informs us that his followers made a
raid around Gaza. This, at least, enables the historian to feel more
confident that Muhammad is not completely a fiction of later pious
imagination, as some have implied; we know that someone named
Muhammad did exist, and that he led some kind of movement. And
this fact, in turn, gives us greater confidence that further informa-
tion in the massive body of traditional Muslim materials may also be
rooted in historical fact. The difficulty is in deciding what is, and
what is not, factual. (See the “Text of Thomas the Presbyter” sidebar
in Chapter 3.)

Moreover, the most important source of information about the
early community of Believers is still to be discussed: the text of the
Qur an itself, Islam’s holy book. For Believing Muslims, the Qur an
is, of course, a transcript of God’s word as revealed to Muhammad.
Each of its 114 separate, named suras (chapters), containing alto-
gether thousands of ayas (verses— literally, “signs” of God’s presence)
is, for the Believer, an utterance of eternal value that exists outside
the framework of normal, mundane, historical time. Traditional Mus-
lim exegesis developed an elaborate chronology for the Qur’an, con-
necting the revelation of each verse to a particular episode in the life
of Muhammad— the so-called “occasions of revelation” literature
(asbab al-nuzul). This literature, which was closely followed by tradi-
tional Western scholarship on the Qur’an, generally divided the text
into verses considered, on grounds of both style and content, to hail
from either the early Meccan, intermediate Meccan, late Meccan, or
Medinese phases of Muhammad’s career. Similarly, Muslim tradition

54

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

preserves accounts of how the revelation came to take the form of a
written book. According to this view, the various revelations that
were first burned into the memory of their prophet were memorized
by his followers; some passages were then written out by different
people in the early community; finally, about twenty years after Mu-
hammad’s death, the scattered written and unwritten parts of the
revelation were collected by an editorial committee and compiled in
definitive written form.

The historian who questions the traditional narratives of Muham-
mad’s life, however, is also likely to have difficulty accepting at face
value this account of how the Quran text coalesced; but if we reject
this account, we are left unsure of just what kind of text the Qur’an
is and where it came from. Starting from this point, revisionist schol-
ars using literary-critical approaches to the text have in recent years
offered alternative theories on the origins and nature of the Qur’an
as we now have it. One has suggested that the Qur’an originated as
pre-Islamic strophic hymns of Arabian Christian communities,
which Muhammad adapted to form the Qur’an. Equally radical is
the “late origins” hypothesis first circulated the late 1970s. Accord-
ing to this view, the Qur’an, far from being a product of western
Arabia in the early seventh century C.E., actually crystallized slowly
within the Muslim community over a period of two hundred years
or more and mostly outside of Arabia, perhaps mainly in Iraq. In the
opinion of this theory’s advocates, the traditional story of the Qur’an’s
origins as revelations to Muhammad is merely a pious back-
projection made by Muslims of later times who wished to root their
beliefs and the existence of their community in the religious experi-
ence of an earlier prophetic figure.

If true, the “late origins” hypothesis of the Qur’an, in particular,
would have devastating implications for the historian interested in
reconstructing Muhammad’s life or the beliefs of the early commu-
nity. But the “late origins” hypothesis fails to explain many features
of the Qur’an text, analysis of which suggests that in fact the Qur’an

L

An l'.arly Qur’an leaf, dated to the first century AH, from SanV, Yemen, covering
Q. 7:37-44. Characteristic of its early date are the vertical strokes leaning to the
i iglit, the diacritical dots in a row, and many letterforms, which have more
in common with monumental inscriptions than later cursive Arabic.

56

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

did coalesce very early in the history of Muhammad’s community—
within no more than three decades of Muhammad’s death. For ex-
ample, meticulous study of the text by generations of scholars has
failed to turn up any plausible hint of anachronistic references to im-
portant events in the life of the later community, which would almost
certainly be there had the text crystallized later than the early seventh
century C.E. Moreover, some of the Qur’an’s vocabulary suggests that
the text, or significant parts of it, hailed from western Arabia. So we
seem, after all, to be dealing with a Quran that is the product of the
earliest stages in the life of the community in western Arabia.

This is not to say that we are all the way back to accepting the tra-
ditional view of the Quran’s origins. Although the Quran itself
claims to be in a “clear Arabic tongue,” many passages in it remain far
from clear, even in the most basic sense of knowing what the words
might have meant in their original context, whatever it was. It may be
that the Qur’an includes passages of older texts that have been revised
and reused. The markedly different style and content of diverse parts
of the Qur’an may be evidence that the text as we now have it is a
composite of originally separate texts hailing from different commu-
nities of Believers in Arabia. Some recent studies suggest that the
Qur’an text is not only aware of, but even in some ways reacting to,
the theological debates of Syriac-speaking Christian communities of
the Near East. Whether further work on the text will vindicate the
close connection of particular passages in the Qur’an with specific
episodes in Muhammad’s life, as elaborated by both traditional Mus-
lim and traditional Western scholarship, still remains to be seen.
What we can say is that the Qur’an text is demonstrably early.

The Character of the Early Believers’ Movement

The fact that the Qur’an text dates to the earliest phase of the move-
ment inaugurated by Muhammad means that the historian can use it

Muhammad and the Believers' Movement

57

to gain some insight into the beliefs and values of this early commu-
nity. Later literary sources may then be used, with caution, to elabo-
rate on what these earliest beliefs may have been, but the problem of
interpolation and idealization in those later sources makes even their
"supporting” role often quite uncertain. It is best, therefore, to stick
very closely to what the Qur an itself says for information.

Basic Beliefs

What, then, does the Qur’an tell us about Muhammad and his early
followers? To start, we notice that the Qur’an addresses overwhelm-
ingly people whom it calls “Believers” (muminun). In this, it differs
from the traditional Muslim narratives and from modern scholarly
practice, both of which routinely refer to Muhammad and his fol-
lowers mainly as “Muslims” (muslimun, literally, “those who sub-
mit”) and refer to his movement as “Islam.” This later usage is, how-
ever, misleading when applied to the beginnings of the community
as reflected in the Qur’an. It is of course true that the words islam
and muslim are found in the Qur’an, and it is also true that these
words are sometimes applied in the text to Muhammad and his
followers. But those instances are dwarfed in number by cases in
which Muhammad and his followers are referred to as muminun,
“Believers”— which occurs almost a thousand times, compared with
fewer than seventy-five instances of muslim, and so on. Later Muslim
tradition, beginning about a century after Muhammad’s time, came
to emphasize the identity of Muhammad’s followers as Muslims and
attempted to neutralize the importance of the many passages in
which they are called Believers by portraying the two terms as syn-
onymous and interchangeable. But a number of Qur’anic passages
make it clear that the words mu’min and muslim, although evidently
related and sometimes applied to one and the same person, cannot
be synonyms. For example, Q. 49:14 states, “The bedouins say: ‘We
Believe’ (aman-na). Say [to them]: ‘You do not Believe; but rather say,

58

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

“we submit” (aslam-na), for Belief has not yet entered your hearts.’ ”
In this passage, Belief obviously means something different (and
better) than “submission” (islam); and so we cannot simply equate
the Believer with the Muslim, though some Muslims may qualify as
Believers. The Qur’an’s frequent appeal to the Believers, then—
usually in phrases such as “O you who Believe . . .’’—forces us to
conclude that Muhammad and his early followers thought of them-
selves above all as being a community of Believers, rather than one of
Muslims, and referred to themselves as Believers. Moreover, the
notion that they thought of themselves as Believers is corroborated
by some very early documentary evidence dating from several de-
cades after Muhammad’s death. For this reason, I will break with
standard scholarly practice and also refer, in these pages, to Muham-
mad and his early followers as “the community of Believers,” or “the
Believers’ movement.” (See “Ecumenism,” later in this chapter, for a
discussion of the exact early meaning of muslim .) For a short while,
Muhammad may have called his movement “Hanifism” (hanifiyya),
presumably in reference to a vague pre-Islamic monotheism, but this
usage does not seem to have become widespread.

If Muhammad and his followers thought of themselves first and
foremost as Believers, in what did they believe? Above all, Believers
were enjoined to recognize the oneness of God. ( Allah is simply the
Arabic word for “God.”) The Qur’an tirelessly preaches the message
of strict monotheism, exhorting its hearers to be ever mindful of
God and obedient to His will. It rails against the sin of polytheism
(shirk, literally “associating” something with God)— which, Muslim
tradition tells us, was the dominant religious outlook in Mecca
when Muhammad grew up there. From the Qur’an’s or the Believ-
ers’ perspective, failing to acknowledge the oneness of God, who
created all things and gave us life, is the ultimate ingratitude and
the essence of unbelief (kufr). But the Qur’an’s strict monotheism
also condemns the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as being in-
compatible with the idea of God’s absolute unity: “Those who say

Mulmmmad and the Believers’ Movement

59

that God is the third of three, disbelieve; there is no god but the one
God . . .” (Q. 5:73).

As we have seen, the idea of monotheism was already well estab-
lished throughout the Near East, including in Arabia, in Muham-
mad’s day, and it has been plausibly suggested that the Qur’an’s
frequent invective against “polytheists” may actually be directed at
trinitarian Christians and anyone else whom Muhammad consid-
ered only lukewarm monotheists. Be that as it may, the Qur’an makes
it clear that the most basic requirement for the Believers was uncom-
promising acknowledgement of God’s oneness. And, as we shall see,
it was from this most fundamental concept, the idea of God’s essen-
tial unity, that most other elements of true Belief flowed.

Also important to the Believers was belief in the Last Day or Day
of Judgment (yawm al-din). Just as God was the creator of the world
and of everything in it, and the giver of life, so too will He decree
when it will all end— the physical world as we know it, time, every-
thing. The Qur’an provides considerable detail on the Last Day:
how it will come on us suddenly and without warning; how just be-
fore it the natural world will be in upheaval— mountains flowing like
water, the heavens torn open, stars falling; how the dead from all
past ages will be brought to life and raised from their graves; how all
mankind will be brought before God to face final Judgment; and
how we will then all be taken either to a paradise full of delights and
ease, or to a hell full of torment and suffering, for eternity. But the
Qur’an does not merely describe the coming Judgment for us— above
all, it warns us of its approach, enjoining us to prepare ourselves for it
by believing truly in God and by living righteously.

From the Qur’an we can also deduce that the Believers accepted
the ideas of revelation and prophecy. The Qur’an makes clear that
God has revealed His eternal Word to mankind many times, through
the intermediacy of a series of messengers (singular, rasul) or proph-
ets (singular, nabi). (The technical distinction between rasul and
nahi will be discussed more fully later in this chapter.) The Qur’an

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

offers many stories about, and lessons drawn from, the lives of these
messengers and prophets. These include many figures familiar from
the Old and New Testament— Adam, Noah, Job, Moses, Abraham,
Lot, Zachariah, Jesus, and others— as well as a few otherwise un-
known Arabian prophets (Hud, Salih) and, of course, Muhammad
himself, to whom the Qur’an was revealed. Indeed, the Qur an, as
the most recent revelation of God's word, obviously supercedes ear-
lier revelations, which were said to have become garbled over time.
And the Believers are repeatedly enjoined to refer matters “to God
and His messenger" Muhammad. Part of this complex of ideas, too,
is the notion of “the book,” referring in some cases to the heavenly
archetype of God's word, of which the Qur’an is merely an exact
transcript, and in other cases apparently to the Qur’an itself or to
other, earlier scriptures.

TEXT OF QUR’AN 7 (A- RAF/THE HEIGHTS); 11-18

We created you and gave you form, then we said to the angels: "Pros-
trate yourselves to Adam!" So they prostrated themselves, except for
Ibl is — he was not among those who prostrated. /He [God] said,
“What prevented you from prostrating yourself when I ordered you
[to do so]?” Fie replied, “I am better than lie; you created me of fire, but
you created him of clay.’'/ [God] said, “Then descend from it [the gar-
den]; you are riot entitled to be arrogant in it. Get out, you are surely
among the humiliated." /He [Iblis] said, “Grant me a reprieve until the
day they are resurrecled.”/[God] said, “You are reprieved.’’/ [Iblis] said,
“Indeed, 1 shall lie in wait for them on your straight path because you
tempted me. /Then 1 will come at them from before them and
from behind them and from their right and their left; you will not
find most of them grateful [to you].” /[God] said, “Get out of it,
despised and banished! Verily, 1 will fill hell with all of those who
follow you.”

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

61

Believers are also enjoined to believe in God s angels— creatures
that assist God in various ways, most importantly by carrying God’s
word to His prophets at the moment of revelation, by serving as
“orderlies” during the Last Judgment, and in various ways interven-
ing in mundane affairs when it is God’s will that they do so. Satan
(also called Iblis) is, in Qur’anic doctrine, merely a fallen angel who
always accompanies man and tries to seduce him into sin (Q. 7:
11-22).

Piety and Ritual

Such, then, were the basic concepts that shaped the Believers’ move-
ment: one God, the Last Judgment, God’s messengers, the book,
and the angels. But the Qur an makes it clear that to be a true Be-
liever mere intellectual acceptance of these ideas was not sufficient;
one also had to live piously. According to the Qur an, our status as
creatures of God demands pious obedience to His word; we should
constantly remember God and humble ourselves before Him in
prayer. But we should also behave humbly toward other people, who
are equally God’s creatures; the Qur’an’s warnings against self-
importance (takabur) and its injunctions to help the less fortunate
are an important part of its vision of piety, one that projects a strongly
egalitarian message that we see reflected in various rituals. Moreover,
the Believers seem to have felt that they lived in a sinful age and
feared that their salvation would be at stake unless they lived a more
righteous life.

What, then, was the piety of the Believers’ movement like? First
and foremost, the Qur’an makes clear that Believers must engage in
regular prayer. This includes both informal prayers requesting God’s
assistance or invoking His favor (called duca’), and the more formal-
ized ritual prayer (salat), performed at particular times of the day
and in a particular way, and preferably in the company of other Be-
I ievers who, whatever their social station, stood shoulder to shoulder

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

TEXT OF QUR’AN 11 (HUD/THE PROPHET HUD): 114

And perform ritual prayer at the two ends of the day, and part of the
night; indeed, good deeds cancel evil deeds. That is a reminder for
those who remember.

to submit themselves as equals before God. References to prayer, in-
junctions to perform it faithfully, and instructions on when and how
to do it are so frequent in the Qur’an, that, as one observer has put it,
“prayer is ... in the Qur’anic vision of the world, the fundamental
fabric of religious behaviour.”

The Qur’an specifically enjoins prayer before dawn, before sunset,
during the night, and during the day (see, for example, Q. 11:114,
17:78-79, 20:130, and 76:25-26). One reference to the “middle prayer”
(Q. 2:238) suggests that three daily prayers may have been the stan-
dard pattern among the Believers at some point in Muhammad’s life,
but the Qur’an’s references to times when prayer should be per-
formed use varied vocabulary and are not clear in their temporal im-
plications and may reflect different moments in an evolving situation.
The systematization of ritual prayers into five clearly defined times— a
systematization that occurred in the century after Muhammad’s
death— does not seem yet to have taken place (at least the Qur’an
provides no compelling evidence for such systematization), but the
early Believers were in general expected to remain mindful of God
throughout the day. Regardless of how many prayers the early Believ-
ers performed daily, however, we can glean what it was like from the
vocabulary the Qur’an uses in association with ritual prayer. It clearly
involved standing, bowing, prostrating oneself, sitting, and the men-
tion of God's name, although the exact mechanics and sequence of
the ritual cannot be recovered from the Qur’an alone. Furthermore,
the Qur’an refers to the Believers being called to ritual prayer before-

Muhammad and the Believers' Movement

63

lianc] and to the need for them to perform ablutions with water before
praying. It is, then, absolutely clear that the Believers of Muham-
mad’s day took part in regular ritual prayers that bore strong similari-
ties to later “classical Islamic” prayer, even if the full details of earliest
ritual practice remain unclear today.

Another practice that the Qur’an describes as vital for Believers is
charity toward the less fortunate in life— another way of bringing
home the idea that all humans are fundamentally equal and that
whatever differences of fortune we may enjoy are only contingent.
This is expressed unequivocally in many Quranic passages: . . but

the righteous person is whoever Believes in God and the Last Day,
in the angels and the book and the prophets; who gives [his] wealth,
despite [his] love for it, to relatives, orphans, the destitute, the trav-
eler, the beggar, and for [the manumission of ?] slaves; and who per-
forms the ritual prayer and pays the zakat . . (Q. 2:177).

Later Muslim tradition refers to such charity under the terms zakat
or sadaqa, usually rendered “almsgiving”; these two terms are closely
associated with prayer in numerous Qur’anic passages, and later Mus-
lim tradition considers them, like prayer, to be one of the “pillars of
the faith” that define a Believer. Recent research suggests, however,
that the original Qur’anic meaning of zakat and sadaqa was not alms-
giving, but rather a fine or payment made by someone who was guilty
of some kind of sin, in exchange for which Muhammad would pray
in order that they might be purified of their sin and that their other
affairs might prosper. Indeed, even in the verse just cited, one notes
that payment of zakat is mentioned after prayer, suggesting that it
was something different than the giving of wealth to the poor (what
we usually mean by almsgiving), which is treated in the verse before
mention of prayer. This understanding of zakat or sadaqa as a pay-
ment for atonement or purification of sins is clearest in the following
verses: “Others have confessed their sins . . . /Take from their prop-
erty sadaqa to cleanse them, and purify [tuzakki] them thereby, and
pray for them, indeed your prayer is a consolation to them. God is

64

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

all-hearing, all-knowing” (Q. 9:102-103; the verb “to purify” is from
the same Arabic root as zakat. The fact that Believers were sometimes
required to make such purification payments, however, underscores
how the community was, in principle, focused on maintaining its
inner purity, on being as much as possible a community that lived
strictly in righteousness, so as to set themselves apart from the sinful
world around them and thus to attain salvation in the afterlife. As
time went on, it seems that membership criteria became more re-
laxed, so that anyone who uttered the basic statement of faith would
be included, but in doing so they at least theoretically made them-
selves subject to high standards of conduct.

The Believers were also required, if they were physically able, to
fast during daytime hours in the ninth month of the Muslim calen-
dar, Ramadan, and at other times as expiation for sins (Q. 2:183-185).
Fasting, particularly at ‘ashura’ (the tenth day of the first month), had
of course long been practiced by Jews and Christians in the Near
East; it may also have been current among adherents of pagan cults
in Arabia and was a practice that continued well into Islamic times.
It is not clear, however, in what measure this earlier fasting tradition
contributed to the Believers’ practices. However, in this season the
Ramadan fast kept all Believers especially mindful of God, at least in
theory, and was a way of binding the Believers together as a commu-
nity through collective ritual activity. Eventually, the Ramadan fast
came to be emphasized and the ‘ashura fast was relegated to volun-
tary status.

The Qur'an also makes reference to pilgrimage rituals that the
Believers are enjoined to perform. These include both the ‘umra or
“lesser pilgrimage,” performed about the Ka'ba in Mecca, and the
hajj or “greater pilgrimage,” performed on specified days in the
month of Dhu 1-hijja in ‘Arafat and adjacent places a few miles from
Mecca (Q. 2:196-200, 5:94-97.) Pilgrimage to the Ka'ba, including
circumambulation and other rituals, had been practiced at the Ka'ba

A hiliamtmid and the Believers’ Movement

65

TEXT OF QUR’AN 2 (BAQARA/THE COW): 183-185

O you who Believe, fasting is prescribed for you, as it was for those
who came before you, that you should be God-fearing [184]. For a
specified number of days. But whoever of you is sick, or traveling,
[prescribed are] a number of other days. And upon those who are
able to do it [but do not], redemption is feeding a poor person; but
whoever does a good deed of his own accord, that is better for him,
and that you fast is better for you, if you could know. [185] The
month of Ramadan, in which the Qur’an was sent down as guidance
to the people, and clear evidence of the guidance and the command-
ments: Whoever of you is present in the month shall fast for it, but
whoever is sick or traveling [shall fast] a number of other days. God
wishes to make it easy for you, he does not wish to make it difficult.
So complete the number [of days] and magnify God because He
guided you; perhaps you may be thankful.

in pre-Islamic times, but forms of pilgrimage were also a well-
established practice in late antique Judaism and Christianity, and
these may also have formed part of the background against which we
should view the pilgrimage practices of the early Believers. Yet it
seems likely that the pilgrimage was enjoined as a duty on the Be-
lievers only in the later years of Muhammad’s career in Medina, for
the simple reason that Muhammad and his followers in Medina did
not have access to Mecca as long as the two towns were locked in
open hostilities. It is noteworthy that the suras of the Qur’an that are
generally dated to the Meccan phase of Muhammad’s career make
no mention of pilgrimage. We see Muhmmad forcing the issue of
pilgrimage, however, in the Hudaybiya expedition of 6/628, when
he and a large group of followers marched, en masse but unarmed,
toward Mecca intending to perform the pilgrimage. The Believers

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

were turned back by Quraysh but not before concluding an agree-
ment that gave them permission to make a pilgrimage to Mecca in
the following year. Of course, the pre-Islamic pilgrimage rites at the
Ka'ba, which were pagan rituals, had to be reinterpreted in light of
the Believers’ monotheistic views. Muslim tradition claims that the
Ka'ba rites were originally established by Abraham, the first mono-
theist, but subsequently became corrupted by pagan practices. The
Believers’ pilgrimage was thus portrayed as the restoration of an
originally monotheistic practice. The story of Muhammad’s occupa-
tion of Mecca in 8/630, as we have seen, relates how Muhammad
purified the Ka'ba enclosure of the pagan idols that had been intro-
duced into it.

The likelihood that the Believers saw themselves as living in a
world beset with sin, from which they wished to differentiate them-
selves, also finds expression in other, more routine practices that are
singled out in the Qur’an for emulation or prohibition. Believers are
urged to dress modestly (Q. 24:30-31)— the implication that this was
in contrast to those around them is obvious— and are forbidden from
eating pork, carrion, and blood (Q. 2:173). They are instructed not to
come to prayers while intoxicated (Q. 4:43). General moral guide-
lines are also frequently encountered. For example, Q. 60:12 prohib-
its, in a few lines, a whole series of gravely sinful practices that were
apparently all too common: associating something with God (shirk),
theft, adultery, infanticide, bearing false witness, and disobeying the
prophet. Passages such as these suggest, again, that the Believers
were concerned with what they saw as the rampant sinfulness of the
world around them and wished to live by a higher standard in their
own behavior.

The piety that is enjoined on Believers by the Quran, then, re-
quired them constantly to demonstrate their mindfulness of God:
through regular prayer, the doing of good works, proper deportment,
and so on. The Qur’an’s emphasis on the importance of righteous

All iliiiimnad and the Believers’ Movement

67

TEXT OF QUR’AN 60 (MUM'l AHANA/THE WOMAN
EXAMINED): 12

O prophet, when Believing women come to you, pledging that they
will not associate anything with God, nor steal, nor commit adultery,
nor kill their children, nor bring slanders they have fabricated out of
thin air [lit. “between their hands and feet”], nor disobey you in any
customary thing, then accept what they pledge and ask God to for-
give them, for God is forgiving, merciful.

behavior is so great that we are fully justified in characterizing the
Believers’ movement as being not only a strictly monotheistic move-
ment, but also a strictly pietistic one. In this respect, the Believers’
movement can be seen as a continuation of the pietistic tendency
found in Near Eastern religions in the late antique period. Although
it makes sense to view the Believers’ movement in this general con-
text, it is of course true that the pietism of the Believers’ movement,
as we reconstruct it from the Qur’an, represents a unique manifesta-
tion of this broad trend toward piety, tailored to the Arabian cultural
environment. Even though the Believers perceived the world around
them to be full of iniquity, the pietism of their movement lacks, at
least as a central element, the kind of ascetic orientation that was so
prominent in the late antique Christian tradition, especially in Syria
and Egypt. True, modesty and humility are enjoined as part of the
Qur’an’s egalitarian ethos, and wealth is occasionally deemed a snare
for the unwary. One passage even hints that children and family may
be distractions from the duty of devoting one’s thoughts to God:
“wealth and sons are the ornaments of the nearer life; but enduring
works of righteousness are better before your Lord . . .” (Q. 18:46).
But these sentiments are more than counterbalanced by many verses
noting that the good things of this life are the result of God s grace

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

TEXT OF QUR’AN 16 (NAHL/THE BEE): 114-115

So eat of that which God has provided you with as lawful and good,
and be thankful for God’s bounty, if you serve Him [115 1. He has
forbidden to you only carrion, and blood, and flesh of the pig, and
that which has been consecrated to other than God; but whoever is
forced [to eat of these] unwillingly and without going to excess, in-
deed God is forgiving and merciful.

and are to be accepted as favors he bestows on the Believers; “O you
who Believe, do not forbid the good things that God has allowed
you, nor go to extremes, for God does not love those who go to ex-
tremes” (Q. 5:87). It seems, then, that the iniquity the Believers per-
ceived around them was a purely human or social phenomenon,
which in no way implied that the blessings of the natural world were
anything other than that— God’s blessings. Enjoyment of them, and
of many of the joys of society as well, are permissible to Believers, as
long as they are enjoyed in moderation— at least, they are not prohib-
ited. Marriage and the raising of children are assumed to be the
norm and are not generally presented as incompatible with a righ-
teous life. In short, the Believers’ piety is a piety that is meant to
function in, and to be part of, the world and of everyday life— not
divorced from it in ascetic denial, as in the late antique Christian
tradition. In this respect, the Believers’ piety resembled more closely
the commonsense notions of righteousness that were found in late
antique Judaism.

Ecumenism

The Qur’anic evidence suggests that the early Believers’ movement
was centered on the ideas of monotheism, preparing for the Last
Day, belief in prophecy and revealed scripture, and observance of

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

69

righteous behavior, including frequent prayer, expiation for sins
committed, periodic fasting, and a charitable and humble demeanor
toward others. All of these ideas and practices were quite well known
in the Near East by the seventh century, although of course in the
Qur’an they found a unique formulation (and one in a new literary
idiom, Arabic). The earliest Believers thought of themselves as con-
stituting a separate group or community of righteous, God-fearing
monotheists, separate in their strict observance of righteousness
from those around them— whether polytheists or imperfectly rigor-
ous, or sinful, monotheists— who did not conform to their strict
code.

On the other hand, there is no reason to think that the Believers
viewed themselves as constituting a new or separate religious confes-
sion (for which the Qur’anic term seems to be milla, Q. 2:120).
Indeed, some passages make it clear that Muhammad’s message was
the same as that brought by earlier apostles: “Say: I am no innovator
among the apostles; and I do not know what will become of me or of
you. I merely follow what is revealed to me; I am only a clear warner”
(Q. 46:9). At this early stage in the history of the Believers’ move-
ment, then, it seems that Jews or Christians who were sufficiently
pious could, if they wished, have participated in it because they rec-
ognized God’s oneness already. Or, to put it the other way around,
some of the early Believers were Christians or Jews— although surely
not all were. The reason for this “confessionally open” or ecumeni-
cal quality was simply that the basic ideas of the Believers and their
insistence on observance of strict piety were in no way antithetical to
the beliefs and practices of some Christians and Jews. Indeed, the
Qur’an itself sometimes notes a certain parallelism between the
Believers and the established monotheistic faiths (often lumped to-
gether by the Qur’an in the term "people of the book,” ahl al-kitab;
Q. 48:29).

Closer examination of the Qur’an reveals a number of passages in-
dicating that some Christians and Jews could belong to the Believers’

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

movement— not simply by virtue of their being Christians or Jews, but
because they were inclined to righteousness. For example, Q. 3:199
states, “There are among the people of the book those who Believe in
God and what was sent down to you and was sent down to them . .
Other verses, such as Q. 3:113-116, lay this out in greater detail. These
passages and other like them suggest that some peoples of the book—
Christians and Jews— were considered Believers. The line separating
Believers from unbelievers did not, then, coincide simply with the
boundaries of the peoples of the book. Rather, it cut across those com-
munities, depending on their commitment to God and to observance
of His law, so that some of them were to be considered Believers, while
others were not.

Believers, then, whatever religious confession they may have be-
longed to— whether (non-trinitarian) Christians, Jews, or what we
might call “Qur anic monotheists,” recent converts from paganism—
were expected to live strictly by the law that God had revealed to
their communities. Jews should obey the laws of the Torah; Chris-
tians those of the Gospels; and those who were not already members

TEXT OF QUR’AN 3 (AL TM RAN/THE FAMILY OF 'IMRAN);

IB-116

. . . Among the people of the book are an upright company; they re-
cite God’s verses through the night while prostrating themselves.
They Believe in God and the Last Day. and enjoin kindliness and
forbid abominations, and hasten to do good things. These are among
the righteous ones. For no good thing that they do will he passed
over without thanks; for God knows the pious. But those who disbe-
lieve, neither their wealth nor their children will be of any help to
them against God. Those are the companions of hellfire; they shall
be in it forever.

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

71

of one of the preexisting monotheist communities should obey the
injunctions of the Qur'an. The general term for these new Qur’anic
monotheists was muslim, but here we must pause for a moment to
discuss in more detail the exact meaning of the words muslim and
islam in the Quran.

The notion that the early community of Believers of Muham-
mad’s day included pious Christians and Jews is, of course, very
different from what the traditional Muslim sources of later times
tell us. In later Islamic tradition, right down to the present, “Islam”
refers to a particular religion, distinct from Christianity, Judaism,
and others, and “Muslim” refers to an adherent of this religion.
These terms are indeed derived from the Qur’an, but their mean-
ing, as used by later tradition, has undergone a subtle change.
When, for example, one reads the Qur’anic verse “Abraham was
neither a Jew nor a Christian, rather he was a muslim hanif and not
one of the mushrikun ” (Q. 3:67; the Arabic text reads hanifan musli-
man), it becomes clear that muslim in the Qur’an must mean some-
thing other than what later (and present) usage means by “Muslim”:
for one thing, muslim in the sentence is used as an adjective modi-
fying the noun hanif (the meaning of which itself remains in
dispute— perhaps a pre-Islamic term for “monotheist”). The basic
sense of muslim is “one who submits” to God or “one who obeys”
God’s injunctions and will for mankind, and of course also recog-
nizes God’s oneness. In other words, muslim in Qur’anic usage
means, essentially, a committed monotheist, and islam means com-
mitted monotheism in the sense of submitting oneself to God’s will.
This is why Abraham can be considered, in this Qur’anic verse, a
hanif muslim, a “committed, monotheistic hanif.” As used in the
Qur’an, then, islam and muslim do not yet have the sense of confes-
sional distinctness we now associate with “Islam” and “Muslim”;
they meant something broader and more inclusive and were some-
times even applied to some Christians and Jews, who were, after
all, also monotheists (Q. 3:52, 3:83, and 29:46). But, we can readily

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

TEXT OF QUR’AN 29 {‘ANKABUT/THE SPIDER): 46

Do not debate with the people of the book except by what is best (i.e.,
with courtesy?)— except those of them who do evil. Say, “We believe
in what was revealed to us and revealed to you. Our God and your
God is one, and to him we submit.”

understand how these Quranic words, islam and muslim, could
subsequently have acquired their more restrictive, confessional
meanings as a new faith distinct from Christianity and Judaism.
Those Believers who were Christians or Jews could always be iden-
tified as such, but a Believer who had formerly been a polytheist
could no longer be called mushrik, so the only term that was appli-
cable to her, once she had embraced monotheism and observed
Qur’anic law, was muslim. And, with time, the term muslim came to
be used exclusively for these “new monotheist” Believers who fol-
lowed Qur’anic law.

Besides the Qur’an, there is additional evidence for the idea that
some Jews, at least, were members of Muhammad's community. Al-
though we have until now eschewed reliance on the traditional
Muslim sources, which are later than the Qur’anic era, the agree-
ment between Muhammad and the people of Yathrib described
earlier, known as the umma document, seems to be of virtually doc-
umentary quality. Although preserved only in collections of later
date, its text is so different in content and style from everything else
in those collections, and so evidently archaic in character, that all
students of early Islam, even the most skeptical, accept it as authen-
tic and of virtually documentary value.

One passage in the umma document reads, “The Jews of the tribe
of ‘Awf are a people [umma] with the Believers; the Jews have their
din [law?] and the muslimun have their din. [This applies to] their

Mtilnimnuid and the Believers’ Movement

73

clients \mawali] and to themselves, excepting anyone who acts wrong-
fully and acts treacherously, for he only slays himself and the people
of his house” [Serjeant transl. Para C2a, with modifications]. In other
words, this and many other passages in the umma document seem
clearly to confirm the idea that some of Medinas Jews made an
agreement with Muhammad in which they were recognized as being
part of the umma or community of Believers. The term muslim in
this passage also probably refers to those Believers who followed
Qur anic law (rather than the Jews, who as the document says, had
their own law.)

The umma document raises many perplexing questions in view
of the traditional sources’ description of Muhammad’s relations
with the Jews of Medina. For example, whereas the traditional
sources describe in great detail his conflicts with the three main
Jewish clans of Medina— the Qaynuqa’, Nadir, and Qurayza—
none of these clans is even mentioned in the umma document.
How are we to interpret their omission from the document? Is the
umma document's silence on them evidence that the document
was only drawn up late in Muhammad’s life, after these three Jew-
ish tribes had already been vanquished? Or were there once clauses
(or other documents) that were simply lost or that were dropped as
irrelevant after these tribes were no longer present in Medina? Or
should we interpret this silence as evidence that the stories about
Muhammad’s clashes with the Jews of Medina are greatly exagger-
ated (or perhaps invented completely) by later Muslim tradition—
perhaps as part of the project of depicting Muhammad as a true
prophet, which involved overcoming the stubborn resistance of
those around him? These and many other questions remain to be
resolved by future scholarship. We can note here, however, that
later Muslim tradition mentions a number of Believers of Muham-
mad’s day who were of Jewish origin— that is, they are described as
“converts” from Judaism to Islam. We may wish to ask whether in
lad these figures were converts; might they have been simply Jews

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

who, without renouncing their Judaism, joined the Believers’ move-
ment, and so were subsequently dubbed “converts” by later tradition-
alists for whom the categories of Believer and Jew had in the mean-
time become mutually exclusive?

Recognizing the confessionally ecumenical character of the early
Believers’ movement as one that was open to piety-minded and God-
fearing monotheists, of whatever confession, requires us to revise our
perceptions of what may have happened in various episodes during
the life of Muhammad (to the extent that we wish to accept the re-
constructions of his life as related by the traditional sources). For ex-
ample, parts of the traditional story of Muhammad’s life, involving
his clashes with certain groups of Jews, have led some scholars to see
Muhammad’s preaching and movement as in some way specifically
anti-Jewish. This is especially true of the story of the ugly fate of the
clan of Qurayza, members of which were executed or enslaved fol-
lowing the battle of the Trench. But in view of the inclusion of some
Jews in the Believers’ movement, we must conclude that the clashes
with other Jews or groups of Jews were the result of particular atti-
tudes or political actions on their part, such as a refusal to accept
Muhammad’s leadership or prophecy. They cannot be taken as evi-
dence of a general hostility to Judaism in the Believers’ movement,
any more than the execution or punishment of certain of Muham-
mad’s persecutors from Quraysh should lead us to conclude that he
was anti-Quraysh.

Muhammad’s Status in the Community

Traditional narratives describe how Muhammad was invited to
Yathrib/Medina to serve as arbiter of disputes between feuding
tribes there, particularly the Aws and Khazraj and their Jewish al-
lies. The selection as arbiter of an outsider— one not belonging to
any of the feuding parties— who was recognized as being of upright
character was not unusual in the Arabian context. The numerous

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

75

Qur’anic verses that enjoin hearers to “obey God and His apostle,”
or merely to obey the apostle, presumably reflect his role as arbiter.
There is no reason to think that Yathrib’s important Jewish tribes
were at the start any less willing to accept him as arbiter, and as
noted above, the Jews were included as part of the new, unified
community in the umma document. Muhammad’s role as political
leader, then, probably posed little problem for Jews or Christians of
Muhammad’s day .

More difficult to assess, however, is the status of Muhammad him-
self in the religious ideology of the Believers’ movement. The Believ-
ers, as we have seen, belonged to a strongly monotheistic, intensely
pietistic, and ecumenical or confessionally open religious movement
that enjoined people who were not already monotheists to recognize
God’s oneness and enjoined all monotheists to live in strict obser-
vance of the law that God had repeatedly revealed to mankind—
whether in the form of the Torah, the Gospels, or the Quran. But
what did the Believers perceive Muhammad’s role to be, and in par-
ticular, how might this understanding have affected the willingness
of Jews or Christians who heard Muhammad’s message to join the
Believers’ movement?

Once again, our only sure source of evidence for approaching this
question is the Qur’an, which offers many specific passages about
Muhammad and his religious status. A number of different words
are applied to Muhamamad in the Qur’an; he is called, above all,
messenger or apostle (rasul), that is, God’s messenger, and prophet
(nabi). Whether these two terms are to be considered synonyms is
not clear, but in at least one verse (Q: 33:40), where he is called
“apostle of God and seal of the prophets,” both terms are ap-
plied to him simultaneously. In Q. 7:157, they seem to be essentially
interchangeable: “. . . Those who follow the messenger, the ummi
prophet . . .” He is called the prophet who is foretold in the Torah
and Gospels (Q. 7:94). He is also called a bearer of good tidings
(mubashshir), a warner (nadhir) —particularly a warner of the coming

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Last Judgment— and occasionally, a witness (shahid) or inviter/
summoner (daci), one who invites others to believe. He is described
frequently as the recipient of inspiration or revelation (wahy), charged
with bringing to those around him what was revealed to him. The
process of inspiration or revelation itself is called “sending down”
(usually tanzil) and is clearly identified as having divine origin (for
example, see Q. 11:14). The substance of what was sent down is
described variously as the Quran (Q. 6:19, 12:3, and 42:7), the book
(29:45, 3:79, 6:89, 18:27, 35:31, and 57:26), wisdom (3:79, 6:89, 57:26,
and 17:39), prophecy (3:79, 6:89, and 57:26), knowledge of hidden
things (3:44, 12:102, and 11:49), and knowledge that God is one
(Q. 11:14 and 18:110).

Muhammad thus claimed to be not only inspired in some way,
but truly a prophet bringing a revealed scripture, just as earlier
prophets had done. He was even called “seal of the prophets,” that is,
the final one in a long series of recipients of God’s revelation. Those
who followed Muhammad were expected to believe not only in God
and the Last Day, but also in Muhammad’s claim to prophecy and in
the validity or authenticity of what was revealed to him (Q. 5:81). How
contemporary Jews and Christians would have received the claim
that Muhammad was a prophet bearing divine revelation is harder to
assess.

As we have seen, the notion that prophecy was still alive in the
world seems to have survived in various parts of the Near East in
the centuries before the rise of Islam, although we still know far
too little about it. Such ideas seem to have been widespread in
Arabia; later Muslim tradition remembers a number of Arabian
“false prophets” who emerged in widely scattered parts of the pen-
insula in Muhammad’s time. The concept of prophecy that we
find in the Qur’an, including the notions of a series of prophets
and of a “seal of the prophets,” is similar to that found in some
Jewish-Christian sects of the early centuries C.E., from which it
spread to other groups, such as the Manicheans. Muhammad’s

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

i /

prophetic activity may thus have seemed quite unexceptional to
people who shared such ongoing expectations of periodic outbursts
of prophetic activity. Yet, certain aspects of his teaching would
doubtless have been more difficult for Christians and Jews to ac-
cept. The small number of Qur’anic verses that explicitly attack
the idea of the Trinity (as defaulting from strict monotheism)
would have posed an insurmountable obstacle for a committed
trinitarian Christian; and some Jews may have balked at the idea
that Muhammad, whom they knew and could see and hear, was to
be put on the same plane as their revered patriarchs of old—
Abraham, Moses, David, and so on.

Yet, when considering this question we must remember that it is
much easier for us, thinking about these events almost fourteen
centuries later, to be aware of the full implications of such contra-
dictions and tensions. We must remind ourselves that in Muham-
mad’s day, most people who joined his Believers’ movement were
probably illiterate; and even if they could read, they did not have a
copy of the Qur’an to examine, as those parts that were known in
all likelihood were known mostly from recitation of memorized
passages. They did not have the advantage that we have today, of
being able to comb patiently through the Qur’an text in its en-
tirety in search of passages that might be particularly problematic.
Indeed, it is fair to assume that most of the early Believers proba-
bly knew only the most basic and general religious ideas we today
can find articulated in some detail in the Qur’an. That God was
one, that the Last Day was a fearful reality to come (and perhaps
to come soon), that one should live righteously and with much
prayer, and that Muhammad was the man who, as God’s apostle
or prophet, was guiding them in these beliefs— that was probably
all that was known to most people of Muhammad’s day, even to
many dedicated participants in the Believers’ movement itself.
And these notions would have posed few problems for Christians
or Jews.

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Apocalypticism and Eschatological Orientation

Another feature of the early Believers’ movement, and one central to
its evident dynamism and ability to mobilize its participants, was its
eschatological orientation. We have already seen that one of the cen-
tral ideas that Believers held was the reality of the Last Judgment.
Some passages in the Quran suggest that this was more than simply
the idea that the Judgment (also called “the Last Day” or simply “the
Hour”) would happen in some indeterminate, distant future. Rather,
certain passages suggest that the community of Believers expected
the Last Day to begin soon— or, perhaps, believed that the “begin-
ning of the End” was already upon them. This kind of apocalyptic
outlook is typically associated with movements that perceive great
sinfulness in the world and that draw a sharp division between good
and evil— which, as we have seen, the Believers did. They commonly
articulate these ideas, moreover, in what one scholar of apocalyptic
thought has described as “easily visualized scenes and strongly-
drawn characters,” such as we find plentifully in the Qur’an.

The idea that the Last Day was near is mentioned explicitly in
several verses: “People ask you about the Hour. Say: Knowledge of
it is only with God, but what will make you realize that the Hour is
near? (Q. 33:63); “Truly we have warned you of a punishment near, a
day on which a man shall see what his hand has done before, and
[on which] the unbeliever says, ‘I wish I were dead!’” (Q. 78:40).
Moreover, the incessant warnings to repent and be pious in prepa-
ration for the rigors of the Last Judgment, which are such a pro-
nounced feature of many of the shorter chapters of the Qur’an, imply
very strongly that the Hour is perceived to be nigh. But other pas-
sages state explicitly that, although near, the exact time of the Judg-
ment is known only to God (Q. 7:187).

As for the nature of the Hour itself, the Qur’an, as noted previ-
ously, describes it in often terrifying detail. Its arrival will be signaled
by numerous portents that display unequivocally the transcendent

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

79

might of God and the transient quality of everything in His created
world, the permanence of which we take for granted. So, on that day,
when the trumpet is sounded, the stars will fall and grow dark, the
heavens will be torn open, the mountains will simply vanish, flowing
away like sand or water. The seas will boil and burst forth. There will
be deafening noise as the physical world comes apart. People will be
in complete confusion; no one will ask after his own loved ones,
newborns will be neglected by their mothers, children will become
grey-haired like the elderly. The graves of the deceased will be
opened and the dead raised up, and they will march forth to face the
Judgment of their Lord. The angels will come down from on high,
bearing God’s throne. Then the Judgment itself will begin; the righ-
teous will feel no fear and their faces will shine with joy, but the
wicked and unbelievers will feel complete terror and despair and will
faint or be convulsed with weeping. Each persons deeds will be as-
sessed and weighed in the balance, and each person rewarded or pun-
ished accordingly. The unbelievers will be rounded up and dragged
through fire on their faces, on their way to the eternal torments of
a fiery hell, while the righteous will go to a garden full of greenery,
shade, rushing brooks, delicious food and drink, and beautiful
companions.

The Qur’an’s unmistakable emphasis on the Last Judgment— a
concept that is closely intertwined with the notions of God’s oneness
and His role as creator of all things— reflects the Believers’ conviction
that the Hour was imminent, which was the motive force behind the
Believers’ intense focus on piety and living righteously. Convinced
that the world around them was mired in sin and corruption, they felt
an urgent need to ensure their own salvation by living in strict accor-
dance with the revealed law, as the Judgment could dawn at any mo-
ment. Here one senses in the Qur’an a slight tension, however, be-
tween the idea of the individual’s ultimate responsibility for his belief
and piety, which is emphasized repeatedly, and the notion that the
individual can best attain a righteous life in a community of other

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Believers— that is, a hint that one’s salvation was enhanced by being
a communal enterprise. A few passages in the Qur’an suggest that, at
the Last Judgment, religious communities may be judged collectively
(Q. 16:84-89). Hence the individual’s fate is partly decided by his
membership in a Believing community or in a sinful one— such as
the poor souls who on the Day of Judgment will be led down to hell
by Pharaoh, the Quranic archetype of the sinful, oppressive leader
(cf. Q. 11:98-99).

Some question whether the Believers really did focus on the com-
ing End, pointing to the Qur’an’s extensive passages that regulate
such matters as inheritance, the punishment of torts, and the like. In
their view, these passages seem to reflect a concern for the here and
now, not for the afterlife. But the two sets of concerns are not mutu-
ally exclusive. Indeed, one who believes that the End is nigh and
that one’s salvation in the afterlife depends on the righteous conduct
of his community would, for this very reason, pay meticulous attention
to the details of social conduct in the community. The very preva-
lence of these “here and now” rulings in the Qur’an, in other words,
may be merely another reflection of an end-time mentality among the
early Believers.

For the early Believers, then, the terrifying expectation of a Judg-
ment soon to come made them intent on constructing a community
of the saved, dedicated to the rigorous observance of God’s law as
revealed to His prophets. It was a community that followed closely
the leadership of the latest prophet, Muhammad; they believed that
his guidance, more than any other thing, would ensure their indi-
vidual and collective salvation when the End suddenly came.

But this is not all. We noted earlier that traditional Muslim exe-
gesis of the Qur’an, and many contemporary studies of it as well,
divide the Qur’an text broadly into “Meccan” and “Medinese”
verses, according to when in Muhammad’s life a particular verse is
thought to have been revealed. If we choose to accept this division,
an interesting fact emerges: The overwhelming majority of the in-

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81

tensely apocalyptic verses are clustered in Meccan verses. The Me-
dinese verses, by comparison, seem much less explicitly absorbed
with warning of the Last Judgment and do not indulge in such po-
tent apocalyptic imagery as do the Meccan verses; on the other
hand, the Medinese verses contain the majority of the Qur’an’s “le-
gal” material, regulations and rulings on social and personal issues
presumably intended as guidelines for the Believers’ new “commu-
nity of the saved.” Scholars sometimes suggest that this reflects the
fact that, in Medina, the community had grown larger and hence
needed social regulation, whereas in Mecca the religious message
had been imperative. It seems just as likely, however, that the early
Believers were convinced that, by establishing their community in
Medina, they were ushering in the beginning of a new era of righ-
teousness, and hence that they were actually witnessing the first
events of the End itself. It is possible, then, to conjecture that they
thought that the events leading to the Last Judgment were actually
beginning to unfold before their very eyes. We have noted that
some passages in the Qur’an express an apocalyptic eschatology
and speak of the many portents that would herald its arrival; but
other verses describe those telltale portents as already happening:
“Are they waiting for anything but the Hour that will come to them
suddenly? For its portents have already come . . .” (Q. 47:18); “The
Hour has drawn nigh, the moon is split in two!” (Q. 54:1). Still other
passages portray the Believers as already beginning to realize the
events of the Judgment, which included, it seems, the vanquishing of
sinful communities by the righteous and the transfer of sovereignty
to the Believers. As Q. 10:13-14 states: “We destroyed generations
before you when they acted oppressively while their apostles brought
them proofs, yet they did not Believe. Thus do we repay a guilty
people. Then we made you successors in the land after them, so we
may see how you behave.”

As a result of this process, the Believers would literally inherit the
Earth from the sinful, just as the followers of earlier prophets had

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done: in Q. 14:13-14, for example, Moses is told how God will drive
Pharaoh and the evildoers out of their lands and “settle you in the
land after them.” A Quranic passage that exegetes traditionally con-
nect with the battle of the Trench, after which Muhammad’s follow-
ers occupied the properties of the Qurayza jews, provides an exam-
ple contemporary with the prophet’s time: “God repulsed those who
had disbelieved in their rage; they attained no good. God was suffi-
cient for the Believers in combat: God is strong and mighty. /And
those people of the book who had backed them [i.e., they backed the
unbelievers], he brought them down from their fortresses, and cast
terror in their hearts; some you kill, and some you take captive. /And
he made you inherit their land and homes and property, and land
you have never trodden. God is powerful in all things” (Q. 33:25-
27). The notion that God’s reward and punishment affects not only
one’s fate in the afterlife but also one’s fate here on Earth could sug-
gest that this change of fortune for the Believers might be part of the
dawning judgment scenario.

For those Believers who fully accepted Muhammad’s mission, this
complex of ideas, which combined the displacement of unbelieving
opponents from their property with God’s plan for the End of Days,
must have been a powerful motivator to engage in positive action-
military if necessary— to vanquish unbelief in the world and to estab-
lish what they saw as a God-guided, righteous order on Earth. This
brings us to the final feature of the early Believers’ movement we
wish to consider: its militancy.

Militancy

As the preceding remarks suggest, another characteristic of the early
Believers’ movement of which the Quran provides evidence was its
militancy or activist orientation, for which the Quranic term is ji-
had. In the Qur’an, jihad seems to be a voluntary, individual com-
mitment to work “in the cause of God,” (literally, “in the path of

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

83

God,” ft sabil allah), not yet the classic doctrine of religious warfare
that would crystallize in later Islamic law (by the eighth century
C.E.). It was not enough for the Believers to be merely pious in their
own lives and complacent about the world; they were also to strive
actively to confront, and if possible to root out, impiety in the world
around them. Q. 4:95, for example, reads, “Those Believers who re-
main passive [literally, “who sit”], other than those who are injured,
are not on the same plane with those who strive in the way of God
with their property and their selves.” This “striving” (jihad) some-
times meant working tirelessly to realize righteousness in his or her
own life, but it also meant that the Believer should try to spread
knowledge of what God has revealed (Q. 3:187), and should actively
“command what is good and forbid what is evil, and Believe ... in
God” (Q. 3:110). Other Quranic verses, however, take a much more
aggressive stance. Q. 9:73 commands the Believers to “strive against
the unbelievers and hypocrites and to treat them roughly.” In an-
other, Muhammad is actually instructed to incite the Believers to
fight against unbelief (Q. 8:65) and even to “make great slaughter in
the earth” in the struggle against unbelievers (Q. 8:67). Nor are the
prophet and the Believers to seek pardon for the mushrikun. Their
sin of denying God's oneness was so abominable in God’s sight that
showing mercy to them was not possible: “It is not for the prophet
and those who Believe to ask forgiveness for the mushrikun, even if
they are close relatives . . .” (Q. 9:113).

It is a distinctive feature of Quranic discourse, however, that
many of its most uncompromising indictments of unbelief and
impious behavior are conjoined with mitigating clauses that temper
their apparent harshness and provide an opening for a more flexible
approach. For example, verses 5 and 6 of the Qur’an’s ninth chapter,
Surat al-tawba, .which is generally one of the most uncompromising
and militant in the whole Qur’an, begins with passages ordering the
Believers to capture or kill unbelievers by every means, but it then
pulls back rather abruptly and commands that unbelievers should be

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

allowed to go unharmed if they repent or if they ask the Believers for
protection. This use of “escape clauses” is characteristic of the
Qur’an and seems to be its way of providing for the flexibility that is
needed in practical situations in life. On the one hand, Believers
should try to coerce unbelievers into believing when possible, but,
on the other, one should not be fanatical and must make allowances
for the realities of a given situation and for the behavior of the indi-
vidual unbeliever. It seems to be advising its hearers that leniency
may, in certain cases, be more effective than brute force and that a
range of policies is most effective in pursuing the one goal of univer-
sal recognition of God.

The Qur’an thus displays a considerable variety of opinions on the
question of activism or militancy, ranging from an almost pacifistic

TEXT OF QUR'AN 9 (TAWBA/REPENTANCE): 1-6

[1] A disavowal (barah) from God and His apostle [addressed] to those
mushrikun With whom you had concluded an agreement. (2) Go about
in the land for four months, but know that you do not weaken God,
rather God disgraces the ungrateful ( kafirim ). (3) An announcement
from God and His Apostle to the people on the day of the greater pil-
grimage: God disavows the musbrikun , and his apostle | likewise], . . .
(4) except those mushrikun with whom you concluded an agreement,
and who have not failed you in anything and have not aided anyone
against you; fulfill your agreement with them to this term: Verily, God
loves the [God-i fearing. (5) [But] when the sacred months are over,
then kill the mushrikun wherever you find them. Seize them, besiege
them, ambush them in every' way— but if they repent, and do the
prayer, and bring zakat, let them go their way. God is forgiving, merci-
ful. (6) And if one of the mushrikun asks you for protection, grant him
protection so that he may hear God’s word, then deliver him to his
refuge— that is because they are a people who do not know.

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

85

quietism, in which only verbal confrontation is allowed, through
permission to fight in self-defense, to full authorization to take an
aggressive stance in which unbelievers are not only to be resisted but
actually sought out and forced to submit. Muslim tradition has con-
strued this range as evidence of a smooth progression occurring over
Muhammad’s lifetime and corresponding to the gradually increas-
ing strength and security of the Believers’ community. Recent work,
however, has shown that these different injunctions may reflect the
divergent attitudes of different subgroups that coexisted simultane-
ously within the early community of Believers. Although, as noted
above, the classic doctrine of jihad was not yet formulated, it also
seems clear that by the end of Muhammad’s life the dominant at-
titude in the community had become the legitimation of, and the
exhortation to pursue, ideological war. Unbelievers were now to be
sought out and fought in order to make them submit to the new
religious ideology of the Believers’ movement— even though the
other, less aggressive, positions were still held by some. It is impor-
tant to remind ourselves here, however, that the Qur’an speaks of
fighting unbelievers, not Christians or Jews, who were recognized as
monotheists— ahl al-kitab— and at least some of whom, as we have
seen, were even numbered among the Believers.

By the end of Muhammad’s life, then, the Believers were to be not
merely a pietist movement with an emphasis on ethics and devotion
to God, but a movement of militant piety, bent on aggressively
searching out and destroying what they considered practices odious
to God (especially polytheism) and intent on spreading rigorous
observance of God’s injunctions. Although the Qur’an never uses
the phrase, this sounds like a program aimed at establishing “God’s
kingdom on Earth,” that is, a political order (or at least a society)
informed by the pious precepts enjoined in the Qur’an and one that
should supplant the sinful political order of the Byzantines and the
Sasanians. There are some grounds for believing that another ex-
pression of this activist orientation was the notion of hijra. In the

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

traditional sources, hijra is interpreted mildly to mean “emigration”
(used, as we have seen, particularly to refer to Muhammad’s move
from Mecca to Medina). But closer examination of the uses of the
word hijra in the Qur'an (and, as we shall see, in some later sources
as well) suggests that hijra had a broader range of meanings. For one
thing, there is some evidence that hijra required leaving a nomadic
life. In this sense, the Believers’ movement was one based in towns
and settlements, for it was only there that the full ritual demands of
the faith could be properly observed. This may be why the Believers,
when they spread outside of Arabia after the prophet’s death, seem to
have become known to the peoples they contacted as muhajirun
(Syriac mhaggraye; Greek agarenoi). On another level, hijra meant
taking refuge with someone in order to escape oppression— hence the
traditional sources’ references to some early Believers’ hijra to Abys-
sinia. In a related sense, there are also Qur’anic references to those
who “make hijra to God and His apostle” to escape from a sinful en-
vironment (Q. 4:100). But those passages that speak of “making hijra
in the way of God” imply that hijra is roughly equivalent to jihad,
“striving,” which is also done “in the way of God,” and several pas-
sages associate hijra with leaving home for the purpose of fighting
(Q. 3:195, 22:58). Indeed, hijra in this larger sense may have served as
the decisive marker of full membership into the community of Be-
lievers, much as baptism does for Christians: “Verily, those who have
Believed and made hijra and strive [ yujahidun ] in God’s way with
their property and themselves, and those who gave asylum and aided
[them]— those shall be mutual helpers of one another. But those
who have Believed and [yet] have not made hijra, they have no share
in the mutual assistance [of the others], until they make hijra . . .”
(Q. 8:72).

Muhammad was an inspired visionary who lived in western Arabia
in the early seventh century and who claimed to be a prophet re-

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

87

ceiving revelations from God. He inaugurated a pietistic religious
movement that we can best call, following its adherents’ own us-
age, the “Believers’ movement.” The testimony of the Qur an re-
veals the basic tenet of this movement to have been insistence on
the oneness of God and absolute rejection of polytheism, or even of
a lukewarm commitment to monotheism. Because many, if not
most, of the people of the Near East were already ostensibly mono-
theists, the original Believers’ movement can best be characterized
as a monotheistic reform movement, rather than as a new and dis-
tinct religious confession. Nevertheless, the Believers seem to have
had a clear sense of being a unique community founded on obser-
vance of God’s revelations and unified, perhaps, by the notion of
hijra.

The Believers also were convinced of the imminence of the Last
judgment, and, feeling themselves surrounded by corruption and
sin, they strove to form themselves into a righteous community so
as to attain salvation on Judgment Day. Hence the movement was
one of intense piety, demanding of all Believers strict observance of
God’s revealed law. As this movement was at the start not yet a “re-
ligion" in the sense of a distinct confession, members of estab-
lished monotheistic faiths could join it without necessarily giving
up their identities as Jews or Christians; “New monotheists” who
had just given up paganism were expected to observe Quranic law,
but Believing Jews could follow the injunctions of the Torah and
Christians the injunctions of the Gospels. (As we have seen, some
Christian groups especially engaged in stringent, even ascetic, reli-
gious observance on the eve of Islam.) Toward the end of Muham-
mad’s life, the piety of the Believers’ movement became increas-
ingly militant, so that the Believers more and more interceded in
the sinful world around them, engaging in jihad in an effort to es-
tablish a righteous order and to spread what they considered to be
true Belief. This activist or militant quality eventually came to in-
clude confronting unbelievers militarily— fighting or striving “in

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the path of God” ( fi sabil allah, as the Qur’an states)— in order to
vanquish unbelief. The Believers may even have felt that they were
witnessing, in the military successes that are traditionally reported
to have come in Muhammad’s last years, the beginnings of the
great events leading up to the Last Day; for among these events
would be their victory and the establishment of their hegemony,
replacing the sinful polities around them. Thus they would inherit
the Earth and establish in it a righteous, God-guided community
that could lead humanity to salvation when the judgment scenario
reached its culmination. This is not entirely an unfamiliar pro-
gram, for there is something in the Believers’ aim of bringing all of
mankind to salvation that is reminiscent of the Byzantines’ objec-
tives of bringing everyone in the world to what they considered the
true faith; and, in both cases, this objective was to be achieved ei-
ther by mission or, if necessary, by war.

Having examined what the early Believers’ movement was, it is
also important to consider here what it was not. It is often alleged— or
assumed— that Muhammad and the Believers were motivated by a
“nationalist” or nativist impetus as “Arabs,” but this identity category
did not yet exist, at least in a political sense, in Muhammad’s day, so
it is misleading to conceive of the Believers as constituting an “Arab
movement.” The Qur’an makes it clear that its message was directed
to people who conceived of themselves as Believers, but being a
Believer is not related to ethnicity. The term a'rab (usually meaning
“nomads”) is used only a few times in the Qur’an, and mostly seems
to have pejorative overtones. The Qur’an does refer to itself a few
times as an “Arabic Qur’an,” but this seems to be a linguistic desig-
nation, perhaps an indication of a certain form of the spoken lan-
guage we today call Arabic.

Nor was the Believers’ movement primarily an effort to improve
social conditions. It is true that the Qur’an often speaks of the need
to have pity on the poor, widows, and orphans, among others, but
these social actions are enjoined because compassion for others is

Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

89

one of the duties that come with true Belief in God and His oneness.
The social dimensions of the message are undeniable and signifi-
cant, but they are incidental to the central notions of the Qur’an,
which are religious: Belief in the one God and righteous behavior as
proof of obedience to God’s will.

3

The Expansion of the
Community of Believers

following the death of Muhammad in 11/632, the Believers
quickly (if, as we shall see, somewhat contentiously) resolved the
question of leadership of the community and then embarked on a
process of rapid political expansion, usually called the “Islamic con-
quests” or (less accurately) the “Arab conquests.” This expansion
lasted, with various interruptions, for roughly a century and carried
the hegemony of the community of Believers as far as Spain and
India— truly an astonishing feat. This chapter will attempt to explain
how this expansion began, to establish the character of the expan-
sion, and to trace the main developments that took place, especially
in its crucial first three decades, until about the year 35/656. But first,
we must once again consider for a moment the sources historians
can use to reconstruct this period in the history of the community.

Sources

The Qur’an continues to be an important source for the history of
the community in the years immediately after Muhammad’s death,

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

91

at least in an indirect way. Even if we consider the Qur’an to be a
product entirely of Muhammad’s lifetime, we can assume that its
guiding ideals continued to shape the outlook and actions of the
Believers in the first years following Muhammad’s death. If we take
the alternative view that the Qur’an text was still crystallizing during
these first few decades after Muhammad’s death, we may take the
text to reflect more directly the differing attitudes of various groups
within the community on crucial issues confronting the Believers at
this time.

The Qur’an, however, ostensibly provides no direct information
on the expansion movement as it played out after Muhammad’s
death. For this reason, the historian who wishes to examine the his-
tory of the early decades of the expansion must take into account the
voluminous body of traditional narratives that the later Muslim com-
munity collected on this subject. These narratives are, like the narra-
tives about the life of Muhammad, very problematic for the historian
and must be used with great care. Like the narratives about Muham-
mad, the conquest narratives contain many interpolations of issues
of concern only to the later community; in particular, they tend to
portray events in an idealized way as evidence of God's favor for the
Believers and probably overemphasize the amount of centralized
control exercised by the leadership in Medina. But recent study of
these traditional narrative sources suggests that we can indeed draw
from them a basic skeleton of the course of historical events, both for
the later years of Muhammad’s career in Medina and for the expan-
sion movement, even though their interpretation and evaluation of
those events is sometimes strongly colored by later, rather than con-
temporary, concerns.

Furthermore, with the first decades of the expansion, we begin to
encounter, for the first time in the history of the community of Be-
lievers, some truly documentary evidence about it. This comes in
the form of the first known coins issued by the Believers and in con-
temporary inscriptions or papyri written by them, or about them. It is

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

true that there are very few documentary sources for the early years
of the expansion, but that simply makes their testimony all the more
precious to us, for whatever we wish to say by way of reconstructing
an historical picture of the Believers’ movement must fit with the
evidence these documents provide. They are to the historian of this
period what the fleeting glimpses of a few fixed stars are to the navi-
gator attempting to make his or her way under cloudy skies: without
them, the navigator works mainly by guesswork.

Almost as important as the first true documents are some very
early literary sources that describe the Believers but that were written
by people who were not themselves members of the Believers’ move-
ment. Of particular importance are writings from various Near East-
ern Christian communities— in Syriac, Greek, Armenian, and
Coptic— and a few Jewish sources. As with the later Muslim sources,
we must scrutinize and evaluate these non-Muslim literary sources
very carefully to be sure we understand exactly when they were first
written, how accurately they have been transmitted to us, and espe-
cially, what biases and preconceptions (contemporary or later) may
have shaped their description of the Believers and their actions.
Nonetheless, they provide us with a welcome alternative perspective
which, taken in concert with other sources both literary and docu-
mentary, helps us to achieve a more historically grounded under-
standing of the period. We shall draw on some of these sources be-
low, particularly when discussing the character of the expansion.

The Community in the Last Years of Muhammad’s Life

The rapid expansion of the community of Believers after Muham-
mad’s death has its roots in the events of the last years of his life. As
we saw earlier, Muhammad and his followers began to meet with
significant political success following his conclusion of the Huday-
biya agreement with Quraysh (6/628). It is reported that the terms of

I'he Expansion of the Community of Believers

93

this agreement initially distressed some of Muhammad’s more ar-
dent followers. They were perhaps opposed to the very idea of mak-
ing any kind of “deal” with the still-hostile Meccan mushrikun. They
were offended particularly by the refusal of Quraysh to allow Mu-
hammad to be called “Apostle of God” in the document or to allow
the Believers to enter the sacred area of Mecca that year. Despite
their misgivings, however, Muhammad and his followers were able,
shortly thereafter, to conquer the major northern oasis of Khaybar, to
launch numerous other raids to the north, and to bring many hith-
erto unaligned groups of pastoral nomads into alliance with Me-
dina. All of these activities solidified Muhammad’s military and po-
litical situation; in particular, the conquest of Khaybar, long an ally
of Mecca against him, allowed Muhammad to make his final assault
on Mecca without fear that Medina might be attacked by hostile
forces coming from his rear. We noted earlier how the increasingly
secure position of the community of Believers in Medina may have
been the reason the emigrants to Abyssinia returned to the Hijaz at
this time. Another reflection of Muhammad’s improved position can
be seen in the fact that a number of key members of Quraysh joined
his movement in the years between the Hudaybiya agreement and
the conquest of Mecca. Two who did were Khalid ibn al-Walid and
cAmr ibn al-‘As. Khalid, a member of the powerful Quraysh clan of
Makhzum, was an outstanding military commander. His skill had
once worked against Muhammad at the battle of Uhud, but he
would henceforth lead many campaigns for Muhammad and, after
Muhammad’s death, would play a major role in the expansion of the
community of Believers. 'Amr ibn al-'As, having declared his alle-
giance to Muhammad, was sent to act as Muhammad’s agent or
governor in distant 'Uman, in eastern Arabia, and would also emerge
in the years following Muhammad’s death as an important political
and military figure.

With the conquest of Mecca in 8/630, and that of the town of Ta’if
shortly thereafter, Muhammad’s growing power was so evident that

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

many groups in Arabia sent representatives to him to tender their
submission. This took place especially during the so-called “year of
delegations,” the penultimate year of Muhammad’s life (9/April
630— April 631). As Muhammad’s position solidified following the
conquest of Mecca, he no longer needed to make alliances with pa-
gan groups for reasons of political expediency, as he had during his
precarious early years in Medina. The Qur’an (9:1-6) refers both to
the existence of earlier treaties with “associators ” Imushrikun, and to
a change of policy that barred such alliances in the future; one
phrase states, “when the sacred months are over, then kill the mush-
rikun wherever you find them.” (See the Sidebar on page 84, “Text of
Qur’an 9 (Tawba/Repentance): 1-6.”) Henceforth, then, mushrikun
were to be barred from participation in the community, which be-
comes now more integrally focused on establishing itself as a group
separated by its belief and its righteousness from the sinful world
around it. It existed now in a state of perpetual war with the mushri-
kun, who are to be pursued and forced to recognize God’s oneness.
The many tribal delegations who are said to have come to Muham-
mad during his last years became not simply allies of the new com-
munity of Believers, but— in order to be allies— full members of it,
and thus on whom were incumbent the duties of prayer and of mak-
ing tax payments (or purification payments, to atone for earlier sin-
fulness). Allies were now required to toe the line in ideological and
financial terms, and payment of a tax by all members of the commu-
nity would henceforth be an important token of their commitment
to it.

In its early days, the community of Believers in Medina was still
small; people still continued to belong to their traditional tribal and
lineage groups but were now contracted to cooperate with one an-
other in new ways. This must have created many tensions and rival-
ries that, for want of other institutions, Muhammad himself had to
defuse personally. In doing so he relied on the backing of close per-
sonal supporters to do his bidding— in particular on Abu Bakr and

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

95

‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, who seem to have been Muhammad’s main
advisers, and to whom Muhammad had tied himself by marrying
their daughters ‘A’isha and Hafsa. By the final years of Muhammad’s
life, however, the community of Believers had grown in size and
complexity. It now embraced a large number of formerly independent
settlements and towns, including Medina, Mecca, Ta’if, Khaybar, the
villages of Wadi al-Qura, and many others. It also included numerous
groups of pastoral nomads that lived in the vicinity of Medina and
Mecca, such as Sulaym, Hawazin, Muzayna, and Khuza'a. Some of
these settlements or groups were tribute-paying former monotheists
whom Muhammad had subjected, such as the Jewish residents of
Khaybar or Wadi al-Qura, and some lived far from Medina.

As the community grew in size and complexity, Muhammad in-
creasingly found it necessary to delegate important tasks of gover-
nance to trusted subordinates, who carried out raiding parties against
recalcitrant tribes, or destroyed the shrines of pagan idols, or served
as the effective governors over various settlements and groups. Many
of these subordinates were trusted early converts, Emigrants or Help-
ers who had shown their loyalty many times over. However, Muham-
mad did not spurn the services of former mushnkun, even those who
had joined his movement quite late, particularly if they possessed
skills that were needed to manage the growing community. The ca-
reers of the Meccans Khalid ibn al-Walid and ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, men-
tioned briefly above, are cases in point. Even more striking, Muham-
mad allowed a number of Qurayshites who only submitted at the last
minute, on his occupation of Mecca, to hold important posts in his
administration— indeed, he even made special bonus payments to
some of them, presumably to bind them firmly to the community.
However, this special treatment for some of his former enemies—
referred to in the Qur’an as “those whose hearts are reconciled” (al-
mu’allafa qulubuhum) (Q. 9:60)— distressed some of Muhammad’s
early followers. They disliked seeing the likes of Abu Sufyan— chief
of the Umayya clan of Quraysh and longtime leader of Mecca’s

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

opposition to Muhammad— and his sons Yazid and Mu'awiya show-
ered with favors and high positions, while they continued to serve in
the rank and file of the movement. But this policy of “reconciling
hearts” gave such people, who with their important contacts and
managerial talents would have been dangerous opponents, a stake in
the success of the Believers’ movement and thus helped ensure their
loyalty to it. By making such concessions, Muhammad seems to show
a pragmatic outlook that enabled him, while still adhering to the basic
ideals he advanced, to make his movement practical in the world. In
the long term, Muhammad’s policy contributed greatly to the success
of the Believers’ movement.

By the time of Muhammad’s death, then, the community of Be-
lievers was expanding its control and influence rapidly from its origi-
nal base in western Arabia. In some respects the exact extent of its
control at this time remains unclear, but there can be no doubt that
it was much larger than even a few years before. Outposts of Believ-
ers are reported in Yemen (in South Arabia), in 'Uman (in eastern
Arabia), and throughout much of northern Arabia as well. Muham-
mad seems to have been particularly interested in expanding to the
north; we have seen how, already in the years before the conquest of
Mecca, he had dispatched a raid (or several raids?) to the distant oa-
sis town of Dumat al-Jandal (modern al-Jawf), roughly 600 km (about
375 mi) north of Medina. After the occupation of Mecca, this north-
ward outlook seems to have intensified even more, including at least
two campaigns into the southern fringes of Byzantine territory in
Syria (today’s southern Jordan). What was behind this apparent con-
cern for the north? It may be that geographical Syria, with its large
cities and fertile farmland that were well known to Quraysh through
their trading activities, appealed to some in Muhammad’s retinue
for commercial and other economic reasons. Some Qurayshites ap-
parently owned property in Syria before Muhammad’s prophetic
activity began; a few cases we know include property owned by the
Quraysh chief Abu Sufyan near Damascus and by 'Amr ibn al-‘As in

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97

southern Palestine. Moreover, if the Believers thought that they were
indeed destined to inherit the Earth, there could be no better place
to begin than in fertile Syria.

Another possible reason for this attraction northward may inhere
in the eschatological tone of the Believers’ movement. Convinced
that the Last Judgment was soon to come, some Believers may have
felt an urgent need to try to secure control of the city of Jerusalem,
which has been called “the apocalyptic city par excellence” Many
apocalyptic scenarios circulating among Jews and Christians in late
antiquity described the Judgment as taking place in Jerusalem, and
although this notion is not expressed in the Qur’an, it soon became
part of Islamic eschatological views. The Believers may have felt that,
because they were in the process of constructing the righteous “com-
munity of the saved,” they should establish their presence in Jerusalem
as soon as possible.

Succession to Muhammad and the Ridda Wars

The death of Muhammad in 1 1 /632 posed a serious challenge to the
Believers who were left behind. Some of his followers— including,
reportedly, ‘Umar— did not wish to believe that he was actually
dead. (This reluctance may have been rooted in their conviction
that the Last Judgment would come during Muhammad’s lifetime.)
Muhammad’s leadership of the Believers had been intensely per-
sonal. Although he had come to rely on key supporters for advice
and to carry out various tasks, there was no clear-cut “chain of com-
mand” that made it obvious who was to take charge on his demise.
Moreover— although Muslim tradition is contradictory on this
question— Muhammad seems to have made neither an unambigu-
ous designation of a successor, nor suggested a way of choosing one,
a matter on which the Qur’an also offers no unequivocal guidance.
During his life, he had kept under control— sometimes only with

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

difficulty — numerous rivalries and resentments among the Believ-
ers themselves; on his death, these rivalries quickly came to the
surface again. The old hostility between the Medinese tribes of Aws
and Khazraj, the not-always-so-friendly rivalry between the Emi-
grants and the Helpers, and the resentment felt by some of Muham-
mad’s early supporters toward highly favored last-minute converts
from Quraysh all threatened to tear apart the core of the Believers’
movement, the community in Medina. At the same time, news of
Muhammad’s death emboldened tribal groups that were not en-
tirely content with their situation under Muhammad and his tax
collectors to consider trying to break away from Medina’s control.

As a result of these tensions, Muhammad’s death called into ques-
tion the unity of the community even in Medina. There seem to
have been proposals that the Medinese Believers should have a chief
for themselves, while Quraysh (presumably including the Emi-
grants?) would have their own leader— in short, a proposal for the
political fragmentation of the community of Believers, essentially
along tribal lines. This immediate crisis of leadership seems to have
been settled quickly: The traditional sources describe a tumultuous
meeting of the Helpers held at a meeting place of the Banu Sa'ida, a
clan of Khazraj, and, as a result, they decided that the community of
Believers should remain united and that Muhammad’s closest ad-
viser, Abu Bakr, should serve as Muhammad’s political successor but
without any prophetic authority. It is difficult, however, to be sure of
just what happened during this crucial episode, because the tradi-
tional sources provide many conflicting reports about it that cannot
be reconciled. For example, some reports state that the prophet’s
cousin and son-in-law, ‘Ali, refused to swear an oath of allegiance
recognizing Abu Bakr’s selection for as long as six months, whereas
other reports deny this. Whatever happened behind the scenes, Abu
Bakr emerged as the community’s new leader.

Muhammad’s political successors (with the possible exception of
Abu Bakr) at first bore the title amir al-muminin, “commander of the

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99

DAM INSCRIPTION IN AL-TATF

This dam belongs to the servant of God Mu'awiya, amir al-mu’minin.
‘Abdullah ibn Sakhr built it with God’s leave in the year fifty-eight.
O God, forgive the servant of God Mu'awiya, amir al-miTminin,
strengthen him and help him, and let the Believers profit by him.
‘Amr ibn Habbab wrote [this]. (Trans. Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 692,
slightly modified.)

Believers,” a title that is interesting for at least two reasons. First, it
reveals that the members of Muhammad’s religious movement con-
tinued to conceive of themselves in the first instance as Believers, as
is evidenced in the Qur’an. Second, the title suggests that the move-
ment’s leadership had a military character, as the word amir, “com-
mander,” “one who gives orders,” is used in Arabic mainly in military
contexts, rather than to describe other forms of social or group lead-
ership. This is presumably a reflection of the movement’s increas-
ingly militant, even expansionist, quality. The title amir al-mu’minin
was used by Abu Bakr’s successors, and its use is confirmed by several
very early documentary sources— inscriptions, coins, and papyri,
some dating fronr the time of one of his successors, Mu'awiya (ruled
40-60/660-680). Later Islamic tradition (and most modern scholar-
ship) generally refers to Abu Bakr and his successors as “caliphs”
(Arabic sing, khalifa)— meaning “successors”— but there is no docu-
mentary attestation of this term before the end of the first century
AH/seventh century C.E. For this reason, 1 shall continue to refer to
the leaders of the community of Believers by the term they used for
themselves— amir al-mu’minin.

On his selection as leader of the community , Abu Bakr first dis-
patched a campaign to the north, which Muhammad had organized
just before his death but which had not yet departed. In doing so,
Abu Bakr overruled the requests of sev eral advisers, who argued that

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

the forces were needed at home in Medina to defend the city against
nearby nomadic tribes hoping to take advantage of the disarray
caused by Muhammad’s death. Fortunately for Medina, a few nearby
tribes, such as the Aslam, remained loyal to Medina and thwarted
such designs. This force departed, but its campaign seems to have
been of brief duration; evidently it was directed against the Quda'a
tribes who lived north of Medina and went perhaps as far as the Balqa3
region (the district around Amman in modern Jordan). It returned in-
tact after about two months.

It was not too soon, for by this time Abu Bakr and the Believers in
Medina needed reinforcements. Numerous tribal groups had sent
delegations to him reaffirming their support, but some, while ex-
pressing themselves willing to observe the Believers’ religious ordi-
nances, had refused to pay the sadaqa tax to the new leader and
had withdrawn without an agreement. Moreover, various nomadic
groups, even some near Medina, were organizing themselves to
resist Medina, perhaps to attack the city itself. This opposition to the
new regime in Medina is called by our sources ridda , “going back”
or (in religiously colored terms) “apostasy.”

After the forces who were sent north returned, Abu Bakr led a raid
to break up a brewing coalition of clans of the Ghatafan and Kinana
tribes near the village of al-Rabadha, about 200 km (124 mi) east of
Medina. Then he organized several other forces under reliable com-
manders, most of them drawn from Quraysh. For example, Muhajir
ibn Abi Umayva and Khalid ibn Asid were sent to Yemen to help the
governor there cope with an uprising by a rebel named Aswad al-
'Ansi, who had proclaimed himself a prophet. Three more com-
manders were sent to subdue (or to establish the Believers’ control
in) distant ‘Uman and the Mahra country of southeastern Arabia.
Another was sent on a similar mission to the Bakr tribes of northeast-
ern Arabia— with some of whom, such as the tribe of Shayban, Abu
Bakr may already have forged some kind of alliance.

The most celebrated campaigns of the ridda, however, were those
of an army of Emigrants and Helpers led by Khalid ibn al-Walid. In

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

101

a series of decisive battles, he defeated powerful groups in the region
of northern Arabia called Najd, some of which were led by people
claiming also to be prophets like Muhammad (considered, of course,
“false prophets” by later Muslim tradition). The “false prophet”
Talha ibn Khuwaylid of Asad, who had been active already in Mu-
hammad’s day and was joined by remnants of the Ghatafan, was de-
feated at the battle of Buzakha; the tribes of Tayyi5, ‘Amir, Sulaym,
and Hawazin were likewise humbled. The tribe ofTamim and their
“false prophetess” Sajah joined the most potent of all Medina’s ri-
vals, the “false prophet” Musaylima (Maslama) and his tribe, the
Hanifa, which dominated the important eastern Arabian oasis of al-
Yamama (al-Hajr, modern Riyadh). Khalid’s successful campaigns
in Najd convinced many local groups that had been temporizing to
join his force as it made its way toward the showdown with Musay-
lima. During this clash at the battle of ‘Aqraba’ (known as the “gar-
den of death” because of the great number of casualties on both
sides), the Hanifa tribe was defeated and Musaylima killed.

As a result of these campaigns, which extended over the length
and breadth of the Arabian peninsula and lasted for more than a year
(11 /March 632-March 633), the whole of Arabia was brought under
the political control of Medina and the Believers’ movement. One
can suppose that the Believers’ astonishing success in overcoming all
resistance in Arabia must have been interpreted by many contempo-
raries as a sign that God was, indeed, on their side— which may have
made some people more willing to accept their rule. The Believers’
hegemony meant that anyone living under their purview, if not al-
ready a monotheist of some kind, had to become one by openly de-
claring God’s oneness and agreeing to live by Quranic law. (Pre-
sumably, the numerous Jews and Christians of Arabia were allowed,
as monotheists, to continue observing their own religious laws, al-
though the sources tell us nothing about this question.) But in
addition to recognizing God’s oneness, these new Believers were also
required to live righteously and to pay the tax (sadaqa) to Medina.
Abu Bakr seems to have insisted especially on the latter provision,

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

and it may be for this reason that he is known in the sources as “al-
Siddiq.” The traditional sources usually interpret this epithet to
mean “the one who speaks the truth,” but “the one who collects
sadaqa” (that is, “the tax collector”) seems just as likely.

On the completion of the ridda campaigns, the community com-
prised three strata. At the top was the old core of Muhammad’s
community of Believers— including the Emigrants, the Helpers,
Quraysh, and Thaqif, the last representing the three main towns of
the Hijaz, Mecca, Medina, and Taif— with Abu Bakr, and his clos-
est advisers (mostly of Quraysh) in the leading positions. A second
stratum consisted of the many individuals and tribes in Arabia who
had tendered their submission to the new regime and supported it
during the ridda (for example, previously unaffiliated tribesmen who
had joined Khalid’s forces during the ridda u'ars). They included
such tribes as Aslam, Ghifar, Muzayna, Ashja1, and Juhayna, and
parts of Sulaym— all of them nomadic groups living near Medina—
as well as parts of other tribes with partly nomadic populations: Ta-
mim, Tayyi5, Bajila, Sakun (a branch of Kinda), Bali, Shayban and
other Bakr tribes, and many others. The bottom of the hierarchy was
occupied by tribes and communities that had resisted Medina’s ex-
pansion during the ridda— groups like the Hanifa tribe, as well as
parts of Tamim, Tayyi5, Asad, Kinda, and many others. These groups
formed the subject population of Arabia in the years after the ridda,
and from them were taken many captives who served the early Be-
lievers as slaves. Among the most famous of these captives was
Khawla bint JaTar, a woman of Hanifa who eventually became the
concubine of 'Ali ibn Abi Talib. She bore him a son, Muhammad
ibn al-Hanafiyya (“son of the Hanifite woman”), who later became
politically prominent. She is exceptional in that, through the fame
of her son, she emerges in the sources as an identifiable individual.
Most such Arabian slaves remain lost in anonymous obscurity, but
occasional reports in our sources— such as one describing the ex-
tensive estates in Yamama owned by the future amir al-muminin ,
Mu'awiya, that were worked by several thousand slaves (probably

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

103

also of Hanifa)— suggest that enslavement of such “enemies of God”
was not an unusual fate for defeated ridda opponents.

The completion of the ridda campaigns, then, marked the exten-
sion of Medina’s control over all of Arabia. But it also represented
something far more important— the integration of all Arabian tribal
groups into the community of Believers, most of them (w'ith the ex-
ception, perhaps, of Hanifa) in such a way that they could be called
on to contribute to the further expansion of the Believers’ movement.
Powerful nomadic groups such as Tamim, Asad, and Shayban, and
settled tribes of Yemen such as Bajila, Azd, and Madhhij, became key
sources of military recruits on whom Abu Bakr and his ruling group
could rely when organizing future campaigns. It w'as these tribes who
would carry the urgent message of God’s word and the need to live in
righteous obedience to it to ever-wider horizons in the years ahead.

The ridda campaigns were also important to the fledgling state in
Medina for another reason: They marked, and partly precipitated,
the transition to a new level of military organization. In the days of
Muhammad and before, military campaigns in Arabia, whatever
their scale, can best be termed raids— operations of limited duration
and always undertaken with very finite objectives, such as the cap-
ture of flocks from a certain tribe or the reduction of a particular
settlement to tribute-paying status. Although such raids sometimes
involved sizable coalitions or alliances of people from different tribal
groups, they only lasted until their particular objective was attained
(or until the raid was thwarted)— if that long. They had a tendency to
fall apart if the campaign became prolonged; the dissolution of
Quravsh’s large coalitions against Muhammad at both Uhud and
the Trench are good examples. The ephemeral quality of these pre-
Islamic raiding parties is doubtless rooted in the fact that they lacked
both ideological content and any organic structure.

The ridda campaigns launched by the Believers, by comparison,
had a strong ideological component. The Believers participating in
them were engaging in jihad, “striving” in the cause of God, and al-
though the}- certainly had specific objectives when setting out, such

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

campaigns had an open-ended quality that had been lacking in pre-
Islamic Arabian raids. Now a victory w'ould be follow'ed not by an
immediate return of the army homeward, but by the thought of
moving on to the next objective in the campaign of spreading God’s
rule. In some cases the forces sent out by Abu Bakr were in the field
for a year or even longer— something hitherto unknow n in Arabia—
and therefore cannot be viewed as simple raiding parties along tradi-
tional Arabian lines. Moreover, forces that engaged in a year of un-
broken campaigning w'ere no longer merely temporary assemblages
of discrete tribal units that might come apart at any moment. Rather,
they must be considered troops in a more tightly integrated military
unit, whose long experience together in the field (as well as their mu-
tual commitment to the community’s religious ideology and mission)
forged ties of camaraderie that could begin to transcend their purely
tribal affiliations. The traditional sources unfortunately offer us only
occasional glimpses of the details of this organizational transforma-
tion, but one dimension of it w'e can perhaps see. The long duration
and the scope of the ridda campaigns would have required the reliable
provisioning of troops. Traditional sources tell us how' the early amir
al-muminins established a protected pasture (hima) at al-Rabadha,
roughly 200km (124mi) east of Medina, where flocks of livestock
could be maintained. We cannot be certain from such accounts, of
course, that this w'as done in order to provision the Believers’ armies
with mounts and meat. However, archaeologists have discovered evi-
dence of large-scale slaughtering of livestock, particularly camels, at
al-Rabadha, in the form of massive deposits of camel bones that are
archaeologically datable to the period of the earliest community of
Believers. If this evidence holds up— it has never been fully pub-
lished—it suggests that Abu Bakr and his first successors as amir al-
muminin may indeed have organized a centralized system to supply
basic provisions to their armies in the field.

It is apparent, then, that the ridda campaigns witnessed the evolu-
tion of the Believers’ forces from simple raiding parties into true

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

105

armies. It is probably no accident that most of the leaders of these
ridda campaigns were men of Quraysh, whose long experience in the
caravan trade provided them with the managerial skills required to
help effect this transformation. The crystallization of these standing
armies during the Arabian ridda wars provided the Believers with the
forces that enabled them to expand outside Arabia.

The conclusion of the ridda campaigns brought the Believers to the
frontiers of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires on the fringes of
northern Arabia. The Believers crossed these unmarked frontiers,
however, and began to raid and integrate the populations on the bor-
ders of the great empires themselves, many of whom already spoke
Arabic. Both empires eventually sent armies to try to thwart this en-
croachment on their rich tax base. This direct political confrontation
of the Believers with the two empires is traditionally taken as the be-
ginning of a much larger process, usually called the “Islamic con-
quest,” w'hereby the Believers expanded into areas outside Arabia. The
first campaigns of this conquest were organized in the last months of
Abu Bakr’s rule (11-13/632-634) and were continued by his succes-
sors, 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (ruled 13-23/634-644) and ‘Uthman ibn
'Affan (ruled 23-35/644-656). The traditional view of the conquest
movement presented by later Muslim writers is that of a series of major
military confrontations between armies of Arabian tribesmen orga-
nized by the amir al-muminin in Medina and the armies of the Byzan-
tine and Sasanian empires trying to stop this encroachment on their
territory. Although interrupted by periods of discord within the com-
munity of Believers known as the first and second civil w'ars, the con-
quest movement resumed after each of them and continued for more
than a century. Eventually, the Believers conquered not only the areas
immediately adjoining Arabia (that is, Syria, Iraq, Egypt), but also
much more distant areas as well— North Africa and most of the Ibe-
rian peninsula in the west; Iran, the Caucasus, and the fringes of
Central Asia and Afghanistan in the east; and even securing a foot-
hold in the Indus valley (modern Pakistan) and elsewhere in South

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MUHAMMAD AND I III 111- I 1 1 AIRS

Asia. Before examining a more detailed description of the course of
the expansion movement, however, it is necessary to consider for a
moment exactly what the nature of this expansion might have been.

The Character of the Believers’ Early Expansion

As noted, the expansion of the community of Believers beyond Ara-
bia into the wider Near East is traditionally viewed as a military
conquest. However, this view is, in some ways, problematic. Tradi-
tional Muslim sources, to be sure, depict it as a frontal assault on the
two great empires by armies of the Believers, involving major battles
bv thousands of troops, the siege of many cities, and the like. There
is surely a significant element of truth in this traditional picture, for
some aspects of it are confirmed by nearly contemporary literary
accounts produced by various Near Eastern Christian writers. For
example, Thomas the Presbyter, writing around 640 C.E., describes
a battle between the “Romans” (that is, the Byzantine army) and the
“nomads (Syriac tayyaye) of Muhammad” some 19km (12mi) east
of Gaza, after which, he claims, 4,000 villagers of Palestine were
killed — Christians, Jews, and Samaritans— and the whole region
ravaged.

TEXT OF THOMAS THE PRESBYTER

In the year 945 [634 C.E.], indiction 7, on Friday 4 February at the
ninth hour, there was a battle between the Romans and the nomads
of Muhammad (tayyaye d-Mhmt) in Palestine twelve miles east of
Gaza. The Romans fled, leaving behind the patriarch Bryrdn, whom
the tayyaye killed. Some 4,000 poor villagers of Palestine were killed
there, Christians, Jews and Samaritans. The tayyaye ravaged the
whole region. (Trans. Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 120, slightly modified.)

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

107

Other contemporary sources provide similar kinds of details. The
bishop of Jerusalem, Sophronius, in a homily of 637 or 638 c.E.,
describes raids by troops of “Saracens” (from a Greek word referring
to Arabian nomads), outpourings of blood, churches pulled down or
burned, villages burned, cities plundered, fields devastated, and op-
posing armies sent against them by the Byzantines. A Coptic hom-
ily of the 640s speaks of “the Saracens who are oppressors, who give
themselves up to prostitution, massacre, and lead into captivity the
sons of men, saying, ‘We both fast and pray.’” Much later, Anasta-
sius of Sinai (died ca. 700 C.E.) speaks of the defeat of the Byzantine
army, referring to the “bloodshed at [the three battles of] Gabitha,
Yarmuk, and Dathemon . . . after which occurred the capture and
burning of the cities of Palestine, even Caesarea and Jerusalem.
Then there was the destruction of Egypt, followed by the enslave-
ment and fatal devastation of the Mediterranean lands and is-
lands . . .” He also mentions the defeat of the Byzantine army and
navy at the battle of Phoenix (ca. 31/651-652 or 34/654-655).

There thus seems to be nearly contemporary literary evidence that
supports what we can call the “violent conquest model” of the early
expansion of the Believers. The problem is that an increasing burden
of archaeological evidence has turned up little or no trace of destruc-
tions, burnings, or other violence in most localities, particularly in
geographical Syria, which is the area both most fully described by
the literary sources and most thoroughly explored by archaeologists.
Instead, the archaeological record suggests that the area underwent a
gradual process of social and cultural transformation that did not
involve a violent and sudden destruction of urban or rural life at
all. In town after town, we find evidence of churches that are not
destroyed— but, rather, continue in use for a century or more after
the “conquest”— or evidence that new churches (with dated mosaic
floors) were being constructed.

Moreover, the “violent conquest” model of the Believers’ expan-
sion into the Fertile Crescent is not convincing from a sociological

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Mosaic floor from St. Menas Church, Rihab, Jordan. The Greek inscrip-
tion from this floor reveals that it was built a few years after the arrival of
the Believers, suggesting that the rhythms of local life were not at first
markedly affected by the change of regime. It reads: “By grace of Jesus
Christ, our God and Saviour, the Temple of Saint Menas was built, paved
with mosaics and completed at the time of the metropolitan Theodore,
most holy and honored by God, through offerings of Procopius, [son] of
Martyrius and Comitissa, his consort, and of their sons, for the remission
of sins and the repose of [their] parents. [It] was written in the month of
March at the time of the eighth indiction of the year 529 [era of Bostra,
ca. 635 c.E.].” (Text [slightly modified] from M. Piccirillo, Mosaics of
Jordan, plate, p. 313.)

point of view. It is predicated on the mistaken notion that the “con-
querors” came with the intention of imposing a new religion by force
on local populations. However, in regions such as Syria, Iraq, Egypt,
and Iran— which already had deeply entrenched religious traditions
(Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism) that were highly adept at wag-
ing religious polemic to defend themselves— this would surely have
failed. For, if the Believers already embraced a clearly defined and
distinct new creed and had tried to demand that local communities

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

109

observe it, those populations of the Fertile Crescent would have re-
sisted their arrival stubbornly, in word and deed. But no significant
Christian or other polemics against the Believers’ doctrines appear
for almost a century. The “violent conquest” model thus presents the
historian with the double problem of explaining, first, how the con-
quest could have succeeded in the face of certain opposition to it by
these articulate religious communities, and second, how the minute
number of conquerors could have maintained their hegemony over a
vastly more numerous hostile population. The “violent conquest
model” also makes it difficult to understand how the Believers could
have maintained their distinctive identity and avoided acculturation
or assimilation into this large conquered population, particularly
during the first few years when they had no local infrastructure of
their own on which to rely.

The difficulties posed by the “violent conquest” model of the Be-
lievers’ expansion into the lands adjoining Arabia are thus signifi-
cant. But, if we take into account the ecumenical or non-confessional
quality of the earliest community of Believers, as described in the
preceding chapter, another way of viewing the expansion suggests
itself, one that accords better with the lack of destruction found in
the archaeological record for this period. Although the expansion
unquestionably included some violent episodes, we can propose that
the arrival of the Arabian Believers in many localities in the Fertile
Crescent would not always, or even usually, have taken the form of
violent confrontation, because the overwhelming majority of these
communities consisted already of monotheists who were, for this
reason, eligible in principle for inclusion in the Believers’ move-
ment. The predominantly West-Arabian leaders of the Believers’
movement were not asking the people of Syria-Palestine, Egypt, and
Iraq to give up their ancestral religion to embrace another— that
surely would have led to violent confrontation. But they were impos-
ing their political hegemony on the conquered populations, requir-
ing them to pay taxes, and asking them, at least initially, to affirm

no

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

their belief in one God and in the Last Day, and to affirm their com-
mitment to living righteously and to avoid sin. They were, in short,
establishing a new political order and perhaps advancing a program
of monotheistic (and moral?) reform but not proposing religious rev-
olution or demanding conversion to a new faith. Some localities in
the Fertile Crescent may have refused to accept the Believers’ terms,
but the majority accepted; to the many Jewish, Samaritan, and
monophysite Christian communities of Syria, Mesopotamia, and
Egypt, in particular, the Believers’ terms may have seemed very ac-
ceptable indeed, as they involved none of the pressure to change
their core beliefs that they had long experienced at the hands of the
“orthodox” Byzantine authorities. Indeed, even orthodox Christians
could easily acquiesce in such terms; the payment of tribute or tax
that was required by the Believers’ regime was not materially differ-
ent from what the Byzantines or Sasanians had formerly imposed
on them. The near-contemporary reports of pillage and captives we
noted above may refer only to those communities or individuals
who actively rejected the Believers’ call to monotheism and righ-
teous living; some (such as Sophronius’s description of depredations
by “Saracens”) may sometimes refer to nomadic raiders who had
no connection with the Believers’ movement at all but were only
taking advantage of political instability in Byzantine Palestine in
the 630s.

Whether Zoroastrian communities, found mainly in Iran and
southern Iraq, were incorporated at the outset into the growing Be-
lievers’ movement in some way is less clear. The dualistic theology
and fire worship of Zoroastrians must have posed a significant ob-
stacle to their inclusion in the Believers’ movement at first. Later
Muslim chronicles describe the destruction of Zoroastrian fire tem-
ples at the time of the conquest, but it is not clear how reliable such
later reports are. Some Zoroastrian communities, like Jewish and
Christian ones elsewhere, may have tendered their submission and
may have been integrated in some way with the community of

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

111

Believers. On the other hand, some large provinces of Iran, especially
in the north, were hardly penetrated by the Believers for a century or
more; the Iranian noble families that traditionally controlled these
areas evidently made terms with the Believers early in the conquest
era, winning virtually complete autonomy in exchange for remission
of tribute or tax payments to the amir al-muminin and his governors.
Certainly Zoroastrians continued to exist in large numbers in north-
ern and western Iran and elsewhere for centuries after the rise of
Islam, and indeed, much of the canon of Zoroastrian religious texts
was elaborated and written down during the Islamic period. Unfor-
tunately, we have far fewer sources for the history of the Zoroastrian
communities than we do for the Christians and Jews of geographical
Syria and Egypt. We have almost nothing by way of archaeological
exploration of predominantly Zoroastrian communities from the con-
quest era, and the non-Muslim literary sources that inform us about
Zoroastrian communities are also much more limited and, in many
cases, of later date.

Of course, one assumes that the Arabian Believers who came into
the Fertile Crescent recognized Muhammad as having been their
prophet. But it is not clear how Muhammad’s claim to prophecy
was at first received or understood by the Christians, Jews, or Sa-
maritans of the area (or, for that matter, by those of Arabia, already
incorporated during the ridda wars into the new polity). Christian
literary sources from the early Islamic period that actually mention
Muhammad (most do not) generally do not call him prophet, but
rather refer to him with terms like “leader,” “teacher and guide,” or
“king,” or note that he w'as a merchant, or that he called people to
the worship of one God. Only a century or more after Muham-
mad’s death do we begin to find Christian sources noting that his
followers call him prophet and apostle. Certainly in later times—
from perhaps the early second century AH/eighth century C.E. or a
little later, by which date Islam had begun to coalesce from the
Believers’ movement into a clearly defined and distinct religious

112

MUHAMMAD AND THK BK LIKYKRS

confession— the recognition of Muhammad as prophet was the
decisive marker that distinguished Muslims from Christians, jews,
and all others. By that time, to utter the “statement of faith” ( shahada ,
literally, “bearing witness”) “There is no god but God, Muham-
mad is the apostle of God” (la ilaha ilia llah, Muhammad rasul allah)
was decisively to declare oneself a Muslim. But here again the early
evidence is suggestive; the earliest documentary attestations of the
shahada, found on coins, papyri, and inscriptions dating before about
66/685, include only the first part of the later “double shahada"-,
“There is no god but God" (sometimes with the addition, “who has
no associate”)— Muhammad is not yet mentioned. If this is not
merely an accident of preservation, u'e may see in it yet another
indication of the ecumenical or non-confessional character of the
early community of Believers, for the statement “There is no god
but God” would have been acceptable to all monotheists, including
Christians and Jews. It is not unreasonable to propose, then, that
many Christians and Jews of Syria, Iraq, and other areas, as mono-
theists, could have found a place in the expanding early community
of Believers.

By incorporating such monotheist communities into their grow-
ing domains, the Believers worked toward their goal of establishing
the hegemony of God’s law' over the whole world. The Quran, as we
have seen, promised the Believers that they would “inherit the earth”
(Q. 33:25-27), but this could be understood to imply not the dispos-
session of existing monotheist populations, but their inclusion within
the Believers’ movement in exchange for the payment of taxes. The
status of these communities and of the people in them was, then,
probably analogous to that of many Arabian tribes or communities
who had joined the Believers during the ridda wars. An East Syriac
Christian text written in northern Mesopotamia in 687 or 688 (Ktaba
d-rish melle of John Bar Penkaye) notes that the Believers (referred to
in the text as “the kingdom of the tayyaye" [nomads] ) demanded trib-
ute but allowed people to stay in whatever faith thev wished. It also

Two early coins of the Believers’ regime. The first coins issued by the
Believers were based on Sasanian or Byzantine coin types. The upper coin
resembles a typical Sasanian coin, with a portrait of Great King Khosro on
the obverse and a fire temple flanked by two attendants on the reverse. In the
obverse outer margin, however, the Arabic slogan bism Allah (“In the name
of God”) has been added at about 4 o’clock The Pahlavi writing in the fields
to either side of the bust of Khosro shows that the coin was issued by Ziyad
b. Abi Sufvan, Muawiva’s governor in the east, from the mint in Kirman,
in the year 52 (672 C.E.). The lower coin, in bronze, is made in imitation of
Byzantine coinage. It was issued in Hims (ancient Emesa); it is undated but
generallv considered to have been issued in 695-694 c.E. The obverse shows
the bust of an emperor, possibly Constans II, wearing a diadem and breast-
plate; to the left, in Greek, KAAON (“good”); to the right, in Arabic, bi-hims ,
"[minted] in Hims.” The reverse shows a large M, the mark on Byzantine
coins indicating its value (40 nummia ); flanking the M are the Greek letters
E piCTlg ("of Emesa") and beneath it, in Arabic, the word tayyih, “good."

114

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

notes that among the Believers who engaged in widespread raiding
parties in these years were many Christians. The Nestorian patri-
arch Isho'yahb III in Iraq, writing a letter to one of his bishops in 647
or 648 C.E., notes that the new rulers “not only do not fight Christi-
anity, they even commend our religion, show honor to the priests
and monasteries and saints of our Lord, and make gifts to the mon-
asteries and churches.”

We should also take note here of a comment made by the Arme-
nian bishop Sebeos, writing in the 660s, whose chronicle provides
one of the earliest extant descriptions of the Believers and their ac-
tions. Among other things, he notes that the Believers’ first governor
of Jerusalem was a Jew. Imputation of close ties to Judaism was a
favorite polemical technique used by Christian authors of this pe-
riod to discredit their opponents, so this claim needs to be handled
with caution; but if true, it provides further evidence of the con-
fessional, open character of the Believers’ movement. It is usually
claimed that, with the arrival of the “Muslims,” Christians and Jews
were either reduced to subject status as “protected peoples” (ahl al-
dhimma), who paid tax but formed a distinctly lower level in society,
or converted to Islam and incorporated into the Arabian Muslims as
clients (mawali). But the passages from Bar Penkaye, Isho'yahb, and
Sebeos noted above, and a few others like them, suggest that some
Christians and Jews may have been fully integrated, as such, into the
early community of Believers; conversion was not at issue, because
as monotheists they did not need to “convert” to anything in order to
become active participants in the community, even in areas outside
Arabia.

The ecumenical quality of the early Believers’ movement, then,
may help to explain why evidence of widespread destruction of
towns, churches, and so on, is largely lacking in the archaeological
evidence of relatively well-explored areas, such as 'Syria-Palestine:
Presumably, it is because most communities, which already consisted
of monotheists, were not destroyed or even seriously disrupted but

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

115

merely underwent a change of masters (and tax collectors). As we
have seen, churches could still be— and, the archaeological record
shows, were— built after the “conquest.” Indeed, the Arabian Believ-
ers may even have shared places of worship with Christians when
they first arrived in a new area. Later Muslim tradition contains a
number of accounts describing how the newly arrived “Muslims”
prayed in part of a church in certain localities (Jerusalem, Damas-
cus, and Hims are mentioned) because they had no mosque of their
own. But, it is possible that the first Arabian Believers to reach such
places, having won the local Christians over to their cause, simply
prayed at first in their churches, because as monotheists the Chris-
tians were considered to be Believers whose places of worship were
suitable. Later Muslim traditions about shared churches may be a
vestigial memory of that early arrangement. Such collective worship
of Quranic and Christian Believers may also be reflected in later
Muslim traditions that describe an early qibla musharriqa or “east-
facing qibla” (direction of prayer) in Syria, perhaps an echo of an
earlier stage in the Believers’ movement, when they faced eastward
like the Christians rather than southward, toward Mecca, in accor-
dance with the later qibla. Some archaeological evidence seems
to support the idea of joint places of worship as well; excavation at
the Cathisma Church, a Byzantine-era construction between Beth-
lehem and Jerusalem, has revealed that in its final phase it was modi-
fied to accommodate the Believers by the addition of a mihrab or
prayer niche on the south wall (facing Mecca), while the rest of the
building continued to function as a church oriented in an easterly
direction.

The early expansion of the Believers outside Arabia, then, must not
be understood simplistically as a case of direct confrontation be-
tween different religions and subsequent conquest of one by another.
It may be true that the Arabian Believers first arrived, in many areas,
as organized military forces and that when the Byzantine or Sasa-
nian regimes sent armies against them, pitched battles were fought;

116

MUHAMMAD AND I III Bi l l l\l RS

both traditional Muslim narratives and the earliest non-Muslim
(mostly Christian) records describe such clashes, and, as we shall
see, sources are in general agreement also on the major battles that
were fought. Such battles, however, usually take place in open coun-
try and leave no archaeological record.

We can also assume, however, that the first arrival of the Believers
in many areas may have been accompanied by widespread— though
probably short-lived and superficial— plundering and raiding, of a
kind that w'ould have been observed and reported by some early
sources (such as the sermons and homilies of Sophronius in the
630s), but that would also leave little archaeological record because
major towns were not involved. The reasons for this petty plundering
are simple. Many of the Arabian tribesmen who had joined the Be-
lievers’ movement during the ridda wars were probably very undisci-
plined. Most of these troops probably knew little more about the
movement they had joined than that a prophet had promised them
riches in this world and paradise in the next, in exchange for their
willingness to engage in jihad, fighting in the way of God, to van-
quish the evil empires of Byzantium and Persia. Of the Qur’an
(which, if we choose to follow Muslim tradition on this point, was
not yet authoritatively written down), they probably knew little more
than the few phrases required for the performance of prayer with the
other troops. Their knowledge of the doctrines of the movement,
then, was probably limited to the idea that God was one, and en-
shrined mainly in enthusiastic slogans such as “God is Great!” (al-
lahu akbar), which they used as a battle cry. It is hardly to be ex-
pected that such troops would take pains to inquire closely whether
the isolated villagers and farmers they encountered were good mono-
theists and committed to a righteous life or not. It seems fair to as-
sume that the widespread pillaging reported in so manv of the near-
contemporary sources was largelv their doing, or that of brigands
taking advantage of the collapse of local authoritv structures that a
change of regime always involves.

I he Expansion of the Community' of Believers

117

TREATY TEXT-TIFLIS

This text is placed in the descriptions of the conquests of the Caucasus
region in the chronicle of Tabari, under the year 22 (642-643 C.E.).
While many of the purported treaty texts found in literary sources are
suspect as later inventions, some features of this one suggest that it
may he more authentic. The term jizya here seems to be used in the
sense of “tribute," not “poll tax” as in later law; also, unlike some other
treaty texts, this one does not speak of Muhammad specifically, but
only of God and His prophets generally. Both of these features may
indicate that the text is based on an actual early document of the Be-
lievers’ movement.

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. This is a
document from Habib ibn Maslama to the people of Tiflis of the
Georgians, in the land of Hurmuz, [guaranteeing] the security of
their persons and their property and their monasteries and churches
and prayers, on condition that they submit the jizya with humility, a
full dinar on every household, and [on condition that they provide]
to us their advice and their assistance against God's enemy and our
enemy, and a night’s hospitality to the traveler— with lawful food of
the people of the book and their lawful drink— and guidance on the
road without being harmed on it by one of you. If you submit [to
God] and perform the prayer and pay zakat, then [you are] our broth-
ers in religion [din] and our clients. Whosoever turns away from God
and His prophets and His books and His party, we summon you to
war without distinction; God does not love traitors. Witnessed by
‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Khalid and al-Hajjaj and Tyad, and written by
Rabah. God and the angels and those who believe have witnessed
[it]; and God suffices as a witness.” (al-Tabari, Tarikh, ed. de Goeje,
i/2675.)

118

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Larger towns and cities, on the other hand, not so easily threat-
ened by ragged and undisciplined bands of recruits, seem in most
cases quickly to have made terms with the Believers once the lat-
ter’s large armed forces arrived. Muslim traditional sources provide
texts of some of these treaties; they are probably later idealizations
made with legal purposes in mind, but their existence points to a
general awareness that these towns had, in fact, been absorbed
peaceably into the Believers’ domain in exchange for payment of
tax. It was only those cities and towns that refused to make terms
that would have been subjected to siege, and these were few— and
hence only in such places, such as Caesarea in Palestine, are we
likely to find some archaeological trace of the “conquest” in the
form of destruction layers. But even in these cases we can expect
the damage to have been limited, for the Believers’ goal was not to
destroy these towns, but rather to bring their monotheistic popula-
tions under the rule of God's law. It was not the monotheist popu-
lation against whom the Believers were waging war, after all, but
the Byzantine and Sasanian regimes, which they saw as tolerating
(or even imposing) sinfulness. The subjection of towns, then, was
followed by the establishment of w'hat the Believers considered a
righteous public order, probably arranged in many cases with the
participation of some of the “conquered” people integrated into
the Believers’ movement, who worked in association with Believers
of Arabian origin. These Arabian Believers, or at least the leading
cadres of them, show up in near-contemporary sources as muhaji-
run (Syriac mhaggraye ; Greek agarenoi or magaritai), “those who
have made hijra.” As we saw in the preceding chapter, however,
hijra was itself a word that carried overtones of migration, of full
membership in and commitment to the Believers’ movement, and
of “fighting in God’s way.”

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

119

The Course and Scope of the Early Expansion

As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the traditional Muslim
sources describe the Believers’ expansion into the lands surround-
ing Arabia in great detail. On the basis of these traditional accounts,
which were compiled mostly in the second century AH/eighth cen-
tury C.E. and later, it is possible to sketch the outlines of what hap-
pened, but in doing so we must be alert to several tendencies in
these reports and try to compensate for them. The compilers of
these later reports tended, first, to portray the early Believers’ move-
ment as already being “Islam,” in the sense of a distinct religious
confession separate from Christianity and Judaism, rather than as a
monotheistic religious movement— that is, they tried to eliminate or
reduce the perception of the early movement’s ecumenical quali-
ties. Second, they portrayed the expansion primarily as a series of
conquests ( futuh ), indeed, as the conquest by “Muslims” of “non-
Muslims.” That is, they tended to focus on the military aspects of
the expansion, emphasizing recruitment of soldiers, battles, the
takeover of cities, and the conclusion of treaties. They paid much
less attention to the way the early Believers integrated themselves
into the fabric of local life in various localities and the nature of
their relations with the “conquered" populations, including the de-
gree to which local populations may have cooperated with the Be-
lievers or what kinds of concessions the Believers may have made to
the “conquered” populations. Third, in describing the expansion as
a conquest, they depicted it in terms that suggested that it was a pro-
cess that succeeded with divine assistance, because the “conquer-
ors” were so much fewer in number than the “conquered.” Only
with God’s help, they suggest, could so few “Muslims” have come
to dominate much larger populations of “non-Muslims” and rout
their huge armies on the battlefield. In short, the later Muslim
sources described the expansion in ways designed to legitimize ret-
rospectively the Muslim hegemony of their owm day over vast areas

120

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Map 4. Early campaigns of expansion (all features approximate)

and populations that were, when they wrote, still predominantly
non-Muslim. They also emphasized the quasi-miraculous and di-
vinely ordained character of the “conquests” and, consequently, of
the political order that resulted from it.

As noted earlier, Muhammad and the early Believers showed a
special interest in Syria. Muhammad, and then the first amir al-
miiminin , Abu Bakr, had made several efforts to pacify the tribes of
the northern Hijaz who occupied the road to Syria and had dis-
patched at least two raids into Svria itself. On the completion of the
ridda campaigns in late 12/autumn 6??, Abu Bakr organized four
separate armies and dispatched them to southern Syria. One force,
commanded by 'Amr ibn al-‘As, was dispatched to the Negev and

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

121

southern Palestine (an area where, as we have seen, he owned prop-
erty and which he presumably knew well). A second force, under
Shurahbil ibn Hasana, was sent to what is today southern Jordan, but
little is known of it. Two other armies, led by Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan
and Abu ‘Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, were dispatched to the Balqa’ region
(the fertile area around Amman) and to the rich Jawlan (Golan) pla-
teau east of the Sea of Galilee, respectively. These four armies to-
gether numbered an estimated twenty-four thousand troops and
consisted mainly of commanders (amirs) from Quraysh and of towns-
men and nomadic recruits from different parts of Yemen. Initially,
these armies seem to have been concerned with winning over or
neutralizing the rural populations, partly nomadic and partly set-
tled, that occupied these regions; it is noteworthy that they were not
sent in the first instance to more heavily settled areas such as the
Galilee or against the major cities of Syria— Damascus, Tiberias, Je-
rusalem, Gaza, Caesarea, and so on. Muhammad’s concern with en-
suring control over nomadic groups as a basic strategy in building a
secure base of power thus seems to have been continued by Abu Bakr
at the beginning of the expansion into Syria. This process of assimi-
lating the rural and pastoral populations on the fringes of Byzantine-
controlled southern Syria lasted about six months (autumn 633-spring
634). The only clash with Byzantine forces of which we know in this
early phase of operations took place at Dathin, near Gaza, where
'Amr ibn al-'As’s troops defeated a Byzantine contingent (perhaps the
Gaza garrison?) in late 12/February 634. As a result of this clash, cAmr
requested reinforcements.

Meanwhile, Abu Bakr was also dispatching commanders in other
directions, specifically to northern Arabia and to Iraq, apparently
with similar orders— to subdue or assimilate the rural (especially the
nomadic) populations there. For example, Khalid ibn al-Walid, who
had just completed his ridda campaigns through Najd and subdued
the Hanifa tribe of Yamama at the battle of Aqraba’ (near modern
Riyadh), was ordered by Abu Bakr to proceed northward into southern

122

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Iraq, probably in early 12/late spring or early summer 633. For al-
most the next year, Khalid and his core force of about one thousand
troops worked their way along the western fringes of the Euphrates,
making alliances with or subduing the numerous nomadic groups
they encountered and reducing or making treaties with the towns
and villages along the river. Many of the tribes Khalid and his forces
contacted during this campaign— Shayban, 'Ijl, Dhuhl, Namir ibn
al-Qasit, Tamim, and others— seem to have been divided among
themselves along lineage lines, or by religion, and Khalid exploited
these divisions effectively, using one section to help bring the re-
mainder to submission. Some of these groups, moreover, such as the
part of Shayban headed by Muthanna ibn Haritha, had been raiding
Sasanian territory before Khalid arrived. (We will meet Muthanna
again.) Khalid also relied heavily on local tribal recruits to swell his
forces and help subdue the numerous towns he encountered: Ubulla
(Apologos), Madhar, Kaskar, Hira, Anbar, and ‘Ayn al-Tamr. In oc-
cupying these towns— often little more was involved than the impo-
sition of a tax payment and an agreement not to oppose the Believers—
Khalid’s forces encountered and overcame Sasanian garrisons that
were stationed in each town. These were small outposts, maintained
by the Sasanians on their desert fringe to discourage raiding by no-
madic tribes into the rich agricultural heartland of Iraq, the Sasa-
nians’ vital tax base. Their defeat by Khalid’s forces was the first di-
rect military confrontation the Believers had with the Sasanians, a
perhaps unintended consequence of the campaign's real goal, which
was to bring all the nomadic populations of the region under their
control.

In Syria, the Believers’ forces had consolidated their position
among the nomadic populations there by early 13/spring of 634 and
were ready to begin their assault on the major cities of the region.
Abu Bakr ordered Khalid to march from Iraq to Syria with part of his
force to serve as reinforcements for the four armies there— and possi-
bly because, as the ablest field commander, his tactical skills were

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

123

needed on the Syrian front. The exact course of events in Syria
over the next two years is, unfortunately, impossible to reconstruct
with confidence because the traditional Muslim sources provide con-
flicting reports that cannot be reconciled satisfactorily. We do know,
however, that during this period the Believers occupied (sometimes
after a siege) some of the major towns of central Syria— Bostra,
Damascus, Fahl (Pella), Baysan (Beth Shaan), Ba'labakk, and Hims
(Emesa). They also faced Byzantine armies sent to contain them, de-
livering major defeats to the Byzantine forces at Fahl, Ajnadayn (in
central Palestine?) and, above all, at the decisive battle of the Yarmuk,
which took place on the southern edge of the Jawlan plateau, where it
drops off into the yawning Yarmuk canyon. It is unclear, however,
whether these great battles preceded and opened the way for the oc-
cupation of the cities of Syria or whether the Byzantine armies were
sent in response to the Believers’ seizure of key cities and towns. An
isolated Syriac fragment that may refer to the decisive battle at Yar-
muk dates it precisely to August 20, 636, a date that agrees with the
dating given by some (but not all) of the traditional Muslim sources
on this event.

It is also unclear how the several armies originally sent to Syria by
Abu Bakr operated in this phase. Most sources agree that Khalid re-
ceived the submission of the city of Bostra, but on other points they
provide divergent information. Were these forces now all under the
command of Khalid ibn al-Walid, as some sources state, or were they
still essentially autonomous forces that sometimes cooperated to con-
front major concentrations of Byzantine troops? And what was the
exact nature of their activities? The situation is further confused by
the fact that the first amir al-muminin, Abu Bakr, died in Medina in
mid 13/summer 634, and his successor, 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (ruled
13-23/634-644), is said by some reports to have dismissed Khalid
and appointed Abu ‘Ubayda to supreme command.

None of these problems can be resolved satisfactorily on the basis
of the traditional sources— and for this aspect of events we have no

124

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

others. The sources do suggest, however, something about the
makeup of the Believers’ forces at Yarmuk and in Syria generally. Ap-
parently they were composed primarily of Quraysh, nomadic tribes
from the Hijaz (Sulaym, Kinana, and Bali) and large numbers of
tribesmen from Yemen (Azd, Himyar, Hamdan, Madhhij, Khawlan,
Khath'am, Kinda, Sakun, and Hadramawt). They seem to have been
joined also by some of the local nomadic tribesmen (Judham and
Lakhm), although others from these same tribes— often described as
having been Christian tribesmen— allied themselves with the Byz-
antine forces at Yarmuk, as did the Byzantines’ old allies in the re-
gion, the B. Ghassan. We can estimate the total size of the Believers’
forces at Yarmuk at perhaps thirty thousand to forty thousand men.

By late 15/autumn 636, then, the Believers’ armies had decisively
destroyed the Byzantine military presence in Syria, defeating several
large armies sent to contain them— including one commanded by
the Emperor Heraclius’s brother, Theodore. They had occupied sev-
eral key towns as far north as Hims (Emesa), and were poised to oc-
cupy the rest of the region without major resistance. Over the next
two years, Abu ‘Ubayda dispatched several campaigns to northern
Syria from his base at Hims (which was long to remain the Believers’
main military base in Syria). The exact dates of these campaigns and
the identities of their commanders are, as usual, confused in the
sources, but by the end of 16/637 the Believers appear to have occu-
pied Qinnasrin, Aleppo, Antioch, Manbij, and other towns of north-
ern Syria. North of Antioch, around the Gulf of Alexandretta and
the Cilician plain, the retreating Emperor Heraclius is said to have
resorted to a “scorched earth” policy, removing garrisons and level-
ing fortifications in an attempt to deter the Believers from advancing
further. (The mountainous districts of Lebanon and northern Syria
were almost impenetrable and remained for decades untouched.)
Farther south, most of Palestine seems to have been quickly occupied
by forces under Shurahbil ibn Hasana and ‘Amr ibn al-‘As. Several
well-fortified coastal towns held out longer because the Byzantines

The Expansion of the Community of Believers 1 2 5

could supply them by sea, particularly Caesarea (which was besieged
for several years before it fell) and Tripoli (which only fell after an-
other decade).

Jerusalem deserves special notice because, as we have seen, it held
unique religious significance and thus may have been one of the
Believers’ main objectives in invading Syria in the first place. As
noted earlier, Jerusalem is reported by Muslim tradition to have
been the place toward which Muhammad first instructed the Believ-
ers to pray. It seems unsurprising, then, that even after they came to
face Mecca when praying, the early Believers continued to think of
Jerusalem as a place of special sanctity— perhaps because of its sig-
nificance in apocalyptic scenarios for the coming Last Judgment,
key events of which, according to contemporary Jewish and Chris-
tian traditions, would take place in Jerusalem. The sources for the
occupation of Jerusalem are very few and heavily overlaid with later
legend, but it seems that the city capitulated to the Believers in 636,
not long after the battle of Yarmuk, in the reign of the second amir
al-muminin, 'Umar. The early Believers in Jerusalem are thought to
have established their first place of worship in, or beside, the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre, but all trace of this has vanished due to the
subsequent destruction and rebuilding of the church by the Crusad-
ers in the eleventh century. The Believers may have abandoned this
first place of prayer some time after their arrival, however, for the Eu-
ropean traveler Arculf, who visited sometime before 683 C.E., men-
tions nothing about the presence of Believers in or near the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre. He does, however, describe a large, crude
place of prayer atop the Temple Mount. This may have been a fore-
runner of the al-Aqsa Mosque.

More or less simultaneously with the Believers’ defeat of Byzan-
tine forces and occupation of Syria, they also embarked on a con-
frontation with the Sasanians and the conquest of Iraq. Once again,
traditional Muslim sources are almost our only evidence for what
happened, and once again they provide conflicting chronological

126

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

information and many suspect accounts, but the general sequence of
events in Iraq is clearer than in Syria.

Some time after the death of Abu Bakr in mid-13/late summer
634, the new amir al-muminin, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, ordered a
modest force from Medina to reinforce the small contingents that
had remained in Iraq following Khalid ibn al-Walid’s departure for
Syria roughly six months earlier. This new force, numbering several
thousand men, was placed under the command of Abu ‘Ubayd al-
Thaqafi, who hailed from the third town of the Hijaz, Ta’if. It had a
core of soldiers from Medina (Helpers) and Abu 'Ubayd’s tribe, the
Thaqif, as well as members of nomadic tribes from the Hijaz, Najd,
and northeastern Arabia, recruited en route to Iraq. This force joined
the followers of Muthanna ibn Haritha (mostly local tribesmen) near
Hira and proceeded to raid the fertile lowlands of Iraq, reducing
many small Sasanian garrisons. But the Sasanians rallied and sent a
sizable force that annihilated most of Abu ‘Ubayd’s army at the Bat-
tle of the Bridge, sometime in 13/634 or 14/635; Abu ‘Ubayd himself,
along with many of his troops, were killed.

In response to this debacle, 'Umar recruited additional troops
from tribes (or parts of them) that had remained loyal to Medina
during the ridda and dispatched them to bolster Muthanna, around
whom the Believers’ remaining forces in Iraq had rallied. These new
reinforcements included more contingents from northeastern Ara-
bia, as well as men from the tribes of the Sarat district, south of the
Hijaz. Especially numerous were the Bajila, led by their chief Jarir
ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Bajali. These elements joined the Believers' surviv-
ing forces that were already on the fringes of Iraq— largely drawn
from tribes that lived in the region anyway— and began to launch
desultory raids on isolated Sasanian outposts; but it seems that Muth-
anna and Jarir fell into disagreement over who held supreme com-
mand in the area.

Meanwhile, ‘Umar set about assembling another, larger, force to
go to Iraq— partly in response to a Sasanian buildup and partly to

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

settle the question of who was in charge there. This undertaking,
according to all sources, began sometime after news reached him of
the Believers’ decisive victory at Yarmuk in Syria. ‘Umar put this new
force under the command of Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, a Meccan Emi-
grant and close early follower of Muhammad who had served both
Abu Bakr and ‘Umar as tribal governor in the Najd. Now he was sent
with a core force numbering around four thousand troops, including
sizable contingents from the Najd, and more troops from the Sarat
region and the Yemen. After Sa‘d s departure, additional “late arriv-
als” came into Medina who had been recruited from South Arabia,
Najd, and the Hijaz. These were duly sent on to join Sa'd’s army, also
now augmented by tribesmen already in southern Iraq, and by the
former Iraq forces that Khalid had taken with him to Syria, which
now returned to Iraq. The total forces under Sa'd’s command thus
numbered around twelve thousand men. The striking thing here is
the success with which the Believers were able to assemble fighting
men drawn from many tribes and all corners of the Arabian penin-
sula, bringing them together to form a force of previously unknown
size in Arabian terms.

It is noteworthy that this army, unlike its predecessor, seems to
have included few men of Thaqif; but even more remarkable is that
it included contingents from some tribes that had not been loyal to
Medina during the ridda. Evidently, ‘Umar decided that the need
for fighting men was so acute that the old policy of relying only on
ridda loyalists had to be abandoned. Indeed, some of the tribal con-
tingents that formed part of Sa'd’s force were led by chiefs who had
backed the ridda rebellions of Talha ibn Khuwaylid in Najd, or of
Aswad al-‘Ansi in Yemen.

By the time Sa‘d reached Iraq, Muthanna had died. Sa‘d promptly
married his widow, doubtless to solidify his ties with Muthanna’s
tribesmen of the Shayban, whose support— as locals— would be vital
to the Believers’ cause there. The Sasanian army, described by the tra-
ditional Muslim sources as being huge, now crossed the Euphrates

128

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

and, under its general Rustam, advanced against Sacd’s forces, which
took up a position southwest of Hira at a place called Qadisiyya. De-
scriptions of the battle of Qadisiyya itself are, although voluminous,
hazy and often suspect, but the outcome was clear— a decisive defeat
of the Sasanian army, including the death of Rustam himself. The
shattered remnants of the Sasanian army retreated across the Eu-
phrates in flight, pursued by Sa‘d’s forces into the agrarian heartland
of Iraq, which was now occupied with only token resistance. The re-
maining Sasanian forces attempted to regroup around the Sasanian
king Yazdagird III at the Sasanian capital, Ctesiphon (today a south-
ern suburb of Baghdad), but Sa‘d s army hemmed in Yazdagird and
his forces there, giving the Believers a free hand to consolidate their
grip on the rest of the country. Eventually Yazdagird and his forces
abandoned Ctesiphon (after being trapped there for an uncertain
length of time— some reports say a few months, others more than
two years) and withdrew to the foothills of the Zagros mountains to
the east to regroup. Here again, their efforts were in vain. Sa‘d orga-
nized another army to confront them and decisively defeated them
at Jalula’ (variously dated by our sources between 16/637 and
19/640). Sa'd established a garrison town, Kufa, adjacent to the old
town of Hira that had been the seat of the Lakhmid allies of the Sa-
sanians, and this became the center of the Believers’ military opera-
tions from central Iraq.

Southern Iraq generally constituted a distinct front. The Sasa-
nians made no major stand there, and a separate and much smaller
force sent from Medina gradually wrested the area from the Sasa-
nians’ local garrisons, including the main towns of Ubulla, Maysan
(Mesene), Abazqubadh, and others. The southern Iraqi garrison, Basra,
was established near the old tow n of Ubulla. After the battle of
Jalula’ in the Zagros, the Sasanians appear to have tried to regroup yet
again in the city of Ahwaz in Khuzistan, but this was conquered by a
force led by Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari, which then systematically reduced
several other towns of that district— Manadhir, Susa, Ramhormuz, and

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

129

Tustar. The forces in southern Iraq are not fully described in the
sources, but their central component seems to have been men of
Thaqif and Medinese Helpers and members of Hijazi nomadic
groups, to which were probably added local tribesmen of ‘Ijl, Dhuhl,
and Tamim.

As a result of these campaigns, then, the whole of the rich Iraqi
alluvium, including Khuzistan, passed under the Believers’ control
between roughly 13/634 and 21/642. Yazdagird and whatever troops
remained loyal to him fled eastward through the Zagros into the Ira-
nian plateau, never to return.

The Sasanian army regrouped yet again farther north, near Niha-
vand, around Sasanian Great King Yazdegird III. But troops from
both Basra and Kufa routed this force also, killing their commander
(ca. 22/642). Yazdegird fled to Khurasan in northeastern Iran where,
some years later, the illustrious history of the Sasanians ended igno-
miniously when he was murdered by a brigand. Henceforth resis-
tance to the Believers’ expansion on the Iranian plateau was local
and sporadic; the Sasanian state had been effectively destroyed.

The new encampment— soon city— of Basra played an important
role in the conquest of the Iranian plateau. An early campaign had
crossed the Persian Gulf to western Iran from eastern Arabia (“Bah-
rayn” in the sources) and occupied Fars province, but it was from
Basra in southern Iraq that the main campaigns into the Iranian
highlands were launched. As a result, in later years much of Iran was
administered by the governor of Basra. Within a few years of its foun-
dation, forces from Basra pushed farther into the central Zagros
region, occupying the key towns— Isfahan, Qashan, Qom, and Qaz-
vin. From these bases in western Iran, Basran troops in successive
years campaigned into eastern Iran. Some forces headed eastward
via Ravy (now in the south suburbs of Tehran) to Qumis, the Gorgan
region, and Nishapur (by the early 30s/650s) in northeastern Iran.
Other campaigns pushed from Isfahan eastward to Yazd and even-
tually to eastern Iran and Afghanistan; Herat was taken around

130

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

30/650-651, and from there campaigns entered Khurasan from the
south (taking Marv, Sarakhs, and Tus) and pushed eastward nearly to
the Oxus River, on the fringes of the Central Asian steppe. Many of
these campaigns were led by, or dispatched by, ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Amir,
governor of Basra for the third amir al-muminin, ‘Uthman.

Meanw'hile, another series of campaigns from Basra occupied
the main cities of southern Iran during ‘Uthman’s reign— including
Kazerun, Istakhr, Darabgird, and Bam. Further expeditions pushed
eastward into mountainous Sijistan [Sistan], beginning a long strug-
gle against the local rulers of Zabulistan (from the early 30s/650s
onward). Campaigns were even sent into desolate Makran on Iran’s
southern coast. By the time the amir al-muminin ‘Uthman was killed
in 35/656, then, most of the Iranian plateau w’as under the political
control of the Believers’ movement— that is, most towns and rural
districts had tendered their submission and agreed to pay tribute to
Medina’s agents. Only mountainous Tabaristan in the north, just
south of the Caspian Sea, and the rugged southeastern part of Iran
were still independent. It must be recognized, however, that in most
areas and towns, especially those far from the key garrison towns,
this control was nominal. The tiny number of Arabian Believers
probably meant that they were seldom seen in many parts of the
Iranian plateau; taxes (or better, occasional tribute) continued
to be levied mainly by the local Iranian landed gentry (dihqans)
who had simply switched their allegiance from the Sasanian great
king, in distant Ctesiphon, to the amir al-muminin of the new state
based in distant Arabia that had emerged out of the Believers’
movement. No change in religious identity w'as apparently required
for them to serve in this way; as much as a century and a half later,
a Christian text describing Muslim tax collection (albeit in a differ-
ent area, northern Mesopotamia) notes that the tax collector was a
Zoroastrian.

Northern Mesopotamia (the Jazira) and Armenia to the north
were conquered in the time of the amir al-muminins ‘Umar (ruled

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

131

13-23/634-644) and ‘Uthman (ruled 23-35/644-656) by forces
coming from both Syria and Iraq. Mosul and other towns near the
Euphrates were evidently conquered by forces from Kufa in 'Umar’s
time, and until the end of the seventh century C.E., Mosul re-
mained an administrative dependency of Kufa, not an independent
province with its own governor, even though it became an impor-
tant military garrison for the new regime. The lion's share of the new
state’s expansion to the north, however, was undertaken by troops
dispatched from Syria. Especially important on this front were the
efforts of ‘Iyad ibn Ghanm, who campaigned in Mesopotamia in
the time of ‘Umar, and of Habib ibn Maslama al-Fihri, who raided
Armenia in the time of ‘Uthman, penetrating as far as Erzurum
and Dvin (near modern Yerevan). Neither the population of Arme-
nia nor the Byzantine emperor (himself of Armenian descent) were
ready to concede this important province, however, and for several
decades it was wrested back and forth, with Byzantine counterof-
fensives being answered by renewed efforts by the Believers’ move-
ment to seize the region. This sustained pattern of on-again, off-
again warfare also became the norm farther west, along the so-called
thughur or border marches delimiting the frontier between the Be-
lievers' territory and the Byzantine empire in southern Anatolia.
There the amir al-muminins launched annual summer campaigns
(called sa’ifa) against Byzantine territory, with the main garrison at
Hims serving as the rear staging-point and front-line outposts such
as Massisa and Tarsus serving as the springboard for the annual in-
cursions to the north. Eventually, these bases would be the starting-
point for campaigns aiming to conquer Constantinople itself (674-
678 and 717-718 c.E.).

Meanwhile, the Believers who had occupied Palestine and the
rest of geographical Syria began to push westward into Egypt and,
from there, into North Africa. The first step was the occupation of
Egypt, the richest province of the Byzantine empire and a key source
of grain for the Byzantine capital at Constantinople. Led by General

132

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

‘Amr ibn al-‘As, who evidently was familiar with Egypt from trading
ventures earlier in his life, forces from Syria entered Egypt in 639.
The reports about what happened in Egypt are confused; some re-
late a military defeat of Byzantine forces, others tell of a series of ne-
gotiations with Cyrus, the orthodox patriarch of Alexandria (who is
sometimes called, for reasons not clear, “al-Muqawqis”). Tensions
between the orthodox patriarch and hierarchy and the Coptic popu-
lation, which was monophysite, may have been a factor. In any case,
by 642 the Believers had occupied most of the country and sur-
rounded Alexandria and were allowed to enter the city peaceably.
The Byzantines sent a naval force which, with help from the local
population, briefly reoccupied Alexandria in 645-646, but their res-
toration was soon reversed.

Although the Byzantines had always made their capital in Egypt at
Alexandria, ‘Amr established his main garrison at Fustat, adjacent to
the former Byzantine stronghold of Babylon on the Nile (in the south-
ern section of modern Cairo). Fustat became the Believers’ main
center and seat of government in Egypt and served as the base from
which, for many decades to come, ‘Amr and his successor as governor
of Egypt, ‘Abdullah ibn Abi Sarh, would launch raids and campaigns
of conquest westward. They first raided Libya, seizing Barca and
other towns in Cyrenaica. Over the next decade desultory raids were
launched against the Byzantine province of Africa ( Ifriqiya , as it be-
came known in Arabic)— modern Tunisia— but a permanent pres-
ence was only established there in the 660s, after the conclusion of
the first civil war.

In 23/644, the amir al-muminin ‘Umar was killed in Medina-
stabbed by a disgruntled slave. On his deathbed, he appointed six lead-
ing figures of Quraysh as a kind of selection committee, or shura, and
instructed them to choose one of their number to be the next amir al-
muminin. (Interestingly, he excluded any Helpers from this group.) All
of the six had been early supporters of Muhammad, all were linked to
him by kinship or by marriage, or both, and all were therefore deemed

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

133

likely candidates for leadership of the Believers’ movement. Among
them were Muhammad’s cousin ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, who had married
the prophet’s daughter Fatima, and the wealthy 'Uthman, the early
follower from the powerful clan of Umayya to whom, as we have seen,
Muhammad had also given two of his daughters, in succession, in
marriage.

After several days of deliberation, the shura unanimously selected
‘Uthman as the third amir al-muminin (ruled 23-35/644-656); he
picked up where ‘Umar had left off in supervising the expansion of
the Believers, and many of the conquests in North Africa, eastern
Iran, Armenia, and the north took place on his watch. Toward the
end of his twelve-year rule, however, he came under increasing criti-
cism from some Believers, which came to a head in a mutiny against
him, resulting in his murder in 35/656. I will discuss these events,
and the issues underlying them, in the next chapter.

Consolidation and Institutions of the Early Expansion Era

The expansion of the early community of Believers out of western
Arabia to encompass vast new areas stretching from Egypt and North
Africa to eastern Iran and Central Asia by the early 30s/650s involved
far more than merely military operations, of course. The armies sent
out by the successive commanders of the Believers represented only
the leading edge of the community’s expansion; once the Believers
had established their control over an area, whether through military
action or by persuading the locals to join them, those military forces
tended to move on or, even if based there, were at least active else-
where. What followed was a much more complex process of interac-
tion between the small clusters of newly arrived Arabian Believers
and the much larger local populations they now governed. Unfortu-
nately, traditional sources, which provide such full (if sometimes
contradictory) information on the expansion itself, are much less

134

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

forthcoming on this complex process of social transformation that,
ultimately, resulted in the gradual emergence of a new Islamic soci-
ety in the Near East.

The Believers of Arabian origin who first settled in adjacent coun-
tries show up in the early non-Muslim sources under several desig-
nations, as we have seen. Sometimes they are referred to by words of
general import used to designate nomadic peoples, such as the
Greek sarakenoi (of uncertain etymology, anglicized as “Saracen”) or
the Syriac tayyaye (“bedouin, nomad”). But in other instances they
are called, in Greek, agarenoi or magaritai, or in Syriac, mhaggraye—
in both cases, words derived from the Arabic muhajirun, which
seems, then, to have been a term the Believers who came to these
regions applied to themselves. In the previous chapter, we discussed
the concept of hijra, with its overtones of “emigration,” “joining (or
taking refuge with) a pious community,” “fighting for the faith,” and
“adopting a settled (that is, non-nomadic) life.” The fact that the new
Arabian settlers called themselves muhajirun suggests that these val-
ues were at the outset an important part of the ethos of these new
settlements.

We can assume— and, as we have seen, there is some evidence to
support this assumption— that some local people joined, or were in-
cluded in, the Believers' movement from the start and participated
in the establishment of the new order. The new order required politi-
cal obedience to the amir al-mu’minin or his representatives— the
local commander or governor— and the payment of tax to the new
regime. But the central concern of the new order was the observance
of God’s law (whether in the form of Qur’anic injunctions, or, for
Jews or Christians, in the form of Jewish or Christian religious laws).
This, the Believers knew, was urgently necessary to ensure their sal-
vation when the Judgment came. This deep concern for the strict
observance of God’s law helps explain why the mere accusation that
the governor cUtba ibn Ghazwan had committed adultery was suffi-
cient to warrant his dismissal; to engage in such behavior, in viola-

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

135

tion of a clear Quranic injunction (for example, Q. 24:2-3), was not
just a personal matter of one’s own private morality; it was a public
threat to the very character of the new regime the Believers wished
to establish.

The Believers inaugurated a number of distinctive institutions
that were instrumental in establishing their rule, and the social order
that came with it, on a firm and enduring basis. The most important
institution of all was that of the amir al-muminin or “commander of
the Believers.” The creation of this office effectively institutionalized
the notion that the whole community of Believers should be politi-
cally united, as it was agreed that it should have henceforth a single
leader. It is worth considering for a moment, however, the degree of
centralized control that the commanders of the Believers may have
exercised. The traditional sources clearly exaggerate this; they not
only depict the amir al-muminin as being responsible for the dis-
patch of armies under various commanders, but they sometimes
suggest that virtually every decision those commanders made in the
field, even on purely tactical matters, such as how to handle a be-
sieged town, was referred back to the amir al-muminin for approval
or consultation. Given the nature of communications of the time,
this kind of detailed supervision by the amir al-muminin is not cred-
ible. On the other hand, we cannot really doubt that the expansion
movement had a central mission, or that successive amir al-muminins
did, in fact, formulate policy and make decisions having broad
strategic importance, even if many tactical matters were left to the
autonomy of their generals in the field. The fact that the amir al-
muminin sometimes coordinated the activities of military forces on
different fronts suggests that even the earliest military phase of the
expansion was undertaken with a goal to realizing certain definite
objectives. Even more important as a measure of the degree of cen-
tralized control exercised by the amir al-muminin is the fact that
they rotated or replaced generals, and later provincial governors,
with some regularity. Moreover, the generals or governors who were

136

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

removed from office almost always stepped down without resistance.
Traditional sources provide us with regular listings of the generals or
governors in charge of various provinces year by year, and such ap-
pointments are occasionally confirmed by coin evidence that proves
without a doubt that a particular governor was in office at a particu-
lar time. The near-contemporary Armenian chronicler Sebeos also
makes clear that governors consulted the amir al-muminin in Me-
dina on important matters of policy. All of this establishes beyond
serious doubt that some degree of centralization of authority and hi-
erarchy of command existed within the Believers’ new regime, even
in its early years.

Another institution of great significance w'as the standing army,
the first emergence of which, during the ridda wars, w;e have al-
ready seen. Closely associated with the army— indeed, in some ways
inextricably bound up with the army’s increasingly professional
status— was an institution called the diwan. The diwan was origi-
nally created under the amir al-mu’minin ‘Umar as a register of those
Believers who were entitled to receive a share of the booty and tax
revenues that were in his day beginning to flow into Medina. The
recipients at first included some who were not in the army (notably
Muhammad’s widows), but the bulk of those on the first diwan were
soldiers, who were entitled to a regular pay allotment— its level de-
pending on how early they had joined up. As time went on, the di-
wan became almost exclusively a military payroll; eventually, the
word diwan came to be applied to other branches of a fledgling bu-
reaucratic system, with the meaning of “government department”;
hence we begin to see references to a chancery (the diwan al-rasa’il)
and a land-tax administration (diwan al-kharaj) . The amir al-mu’minins
also established something called the barid, or official courier system,
through which they received reports from their governors and spies in
the field.

Also closely associated with the rise of the army was yet another new
institution: the special settlements the Believers established for them-

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

H 7

selves, often beside (or sometimes, it seems, within) existing towns or
cities. These settlements were sometimes called, in Arabic, amsar (sin-
gular, misr), usually translated as “garrison towns.” This translation is
only partly accurate; the word misr does seem to be derived from an
old South Arabic word meaning “expeditionary force,” and the amsar
were where the Believers’ expeditionary forces outside Arabia w'ere
first encamped. But, although they may have begun as garrisons, the
amsar became almost immediately much more than that. They were
soon filled not only with soldiers but also with the soldiers’ families,
with other Believers from Arabia who were not soldiers, and probably
with local people who had joined the Believers’ movement. Funda-
mentally, these new settlements, set apart from the existing towns,
were an expression of the Believers’ concern for piety and righteous
living— a concern that led them to isolate themselves from all of those
in the surrounding society who, although monotheists, were not suffi-
ciently stringent in their behavior or religious observances to be con-
sidered true Believers. This self-imposed isolation may help explain
why the tiny number of Arabian Believers adhering to Quranic teach-
ings did not vanish through acculturation into the much larger local
populations.

Some of the amsar grew into great cities and eventually became
the centers in which a new Islamic culture was elaborated and from
which it radiated to surrounding areas— developments that only hap-
pened, however, many decades after they were first settled. Tradi-
tional sources mention the foundation of some of the amsar— in
Iraq, Kufa (near Hira) and Basra (near Ubulla), and in Egypt Fustat
(“Old Cairo”), for example. Curiously, we have no such references
for new settlements near Damascus, Hims, Jerusalem, or other towns
of Syria, suggesting that the Believers may have taken up residence
inside existing quarters of these towns, which may have been partly
abandoned by their Christian inhabitants. On the other hand, the
best archaeological attestation of such a settlement comes from
southern Syria— the excavated remains of Ayla (at modern Aqaba,

ISLAMIC AQABA

Preliminary F«eW Plar
1986-1993 Excavate*

Plan and West Wall of Avia (modern Aqaba, Jordan). This site, apparently
founded at the time of the amir al-muminin ‘Uthman (644-656), was
clearly a planned settlement; excavation uncovered the citv wall with
regularly spaced defensive bastions and city gates in each direction.

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

139

Jordan), thought to date to the time of the third amir al-muminin,
‘Uthman (ruled 23-35/644-656) and situated virtually at the gates
of the existing Roman-Byzantine town, Aelana. The ruins of Ayla re-
veal that such settlements were carefully laid out according to an
orthogonal plan, not haphazard camps or shantytowns. Ayla had a
rectangular plan with four gates, one in the middle of each wall, and
protruding towers spaced regularly along each outside wall, as well
as a systematic street plan— a design adapted from Roman-Byzantine
encampments familiar in the Levant. The one description of the lay-
out of an early misr that is found in our traditional sources— which
tells about the settlement of Kufa— speaks of the regular placement of
streets around a rectangular central court or square, with specific
tribes being assigned particular allotments along given streets (some-
thing we cannot know from Ayla’s archaeological remains). It makes
clear, however, that Kufa’s original arrangement was overwhelmed by
a huge influx of Believers coming from Arabia in the years after the
conquest of Iraq, so that the original plan of the city had to be modi-
fied several times.

The language used in these new settlements was Arabic, regard-
less of where they were located. Arabic was, of course, the native
language of the Arabian Believers, whether soldiers or not, who
emigrated to the Fertile Crescent; it was also the language of the
Qur’an and the language in which communal prayer was con-
ducted. Moreover, some of the Believers of local origin probably
spoke Arabic as well; for Arabic had spread in the centuries before
Islam from the desert fringes into the settled farmland of southern
Syria and southern Iraq, in particular, and even into the eastern
desert of Egypt. Of course, most amsar were located in areas where
other languages were current; some of the country population in
Syria and Iraq spoke some form of Aramaic; the majority of the
population around Fustat in Egypt spoke Coptic; and in the Syrian
cities, where Arabian Believers seem to have occupied abandoned
quarters in existing towns (as in Damascus or Hims) rather than

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

building new settlements (as at Ayla), some of the urban popula-
tion spoke Greek. In the Iranian plateau, early outposts such as Is-
takhr (north of Shiraz) or Marv were Arabic-speaking islands in a
sea of peoples speaking various Iranian languages. The linguistic
isolation of the Believers’ early settlements, no less than what we
might term their moral or pious separateness, helped the Believers
maintain their sense of distinctness and avoid acculturation in the
decades before they developed a clear-cut sense of themselves as
constituting a separate monotheistic religious confession as Mus-
lims and contributed in a fundamental way also to the eventual
development of a vibrant new Islamic culture whose linguistic ve-
hicle was Arabic.

The concerns of the Believers’ regime in the newly acquired ter-
ritories were manifold. They of course tried to maintain public or-
der, in the settlement itself and in the surrounding countryside, not
least because tax collection depended on it. The Believers’ new set-
tlements or colonies were headed by a governor who answered di-
rectly to the amir al-muminin. At first, these governors were usually
the same commander who had led the Believers’ military forces into
an area, and the government of the settlements had a distinctly mili-
tary flavor. With time, the governors’ interests became less strictly
military; in addition to administering the army, the governors also
had to concern themselves with the collection of taxes, with keeping
social order in accordance with God’s law, and with dispensing jus-
tice within the community. Quite early, some of these functions
were put in the hands of separate individuals, with a military gover-
nor (amir, “commander”) serving in tandem with a financial gover-
nor or tax agent (camil). Within the new amsar, the governors dis-
pensed justice (Egyptian papyri show the governors doing this);
enforced properly pious behavior and demeanor, including the con-
duct of regular prayers; and managed finances, including the distri-
bution of stipends payable to soldiers and other recipients, and orga-
nizing and dispatching tax revenues, a share of which was sent to

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141

Medina. In cases in which the settlement was the base of operations
for military forces active in the field, the governor was also charged
with distributing the booty brought in by those forces, including
slaves and livestock as well as property of other kinds, a share of which
was reserved for the amir al-muminin and had to be forwarded to
Medina.

In the countryside, the governors were concerned above all with
collecting taxes, which could be done only if calm reigned in the
taxable districts. Papyri from Egypt show that local disputes were
sometimes referred to the governor, but in many cases adjudication
was left in the hands of subordinates such as the local village head-
man. The evidence available suggests that during the early de-
cades of the Believers’ rule, the countryside was largely left to run
itself, under the direction of village headmen or tribal chiefs, who
organized periodic payment of taxes to the regime. There are a few
murky references to Believers (especially well-connected chiefs of
Quraysh) becoming wealthy because of their control over extensive
country districts; many of these were probably lands abandoned by
their erstwhile owners. It does not seem likely, however, that many
Arabian Believers settled in the open countryside in these early
years— more probably, those who had acquired rural properties re-
mained clustered in the cities or smaller towns and simply har-
vested wealth from their holdings as absentee landlords. It is also
unclear to what degree rural populations and communities that
had remained in place during the transition to the Believers’ rule
were moved about in the early years following the change of rulers.
A few accounts describe the relocation of certain people to new
places, usually to occupy or resettle a town that had resisted and
been forcibly conquered. Tripoli in modern-day Lebanon, for ex-
ample, which was besieged for years and resisted stubbornly, was
finally evacuated by Byzantine ships, after which it was resettled
with Jews— from where, we are not told— by ‘Uthman’s governor of
Syria, Mu'awiya. This may mean that these Jews were considered

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

especially likely to be loyal to the regime — or perhaps it merely re-
flects the amir al-muminin’s unwillingness to have Christians re-
populate a town from which the Byzantines had been expelled only
with great difficulty.

We have reviewed the course of the Believers’ expansion in the
years following Muhammad’s death and described some of the insti-
tutional and other innovations that accompanied this process. We
have also considered the character of the expansion, arguing that the
sources’ emphasis on the military dimension of the expansion has
obscured its nature as a monotheistic reform movement that many
local communities may have seen little reason to oppose, because
it was doctrinally not obnoxious to them. This may be why, to judge
from the archaeological record, most localities came under the
Believers’ rule with little resistance. Military action must have been
used by the Believers at times, perhaps mainly against Byzantine
and Sasanian garrisons and standing armies. Most sources speak of
major battles, sieges of entrenched garrisons, and some raiding and
bloodshed at the time of the transition, but, whatever its extent, this
seems to have ended quickly; the Christian author Bar Penkaye,
writing in 681 or 682, can describe the era of Mu'awiya (ruled 41-
60/661-680)— barely twenty years after the Believers came to power
in Syria and Iraq— as one of justice, peace, prosperity, and religious
tolerance.

The architects of the expansion— the early amir al-muminins—
and the Believers generally seem in this period to have had as their
objective the establishment of a new and righteous public order
that conformed to the dictates of God’s law as they understood it—
particularly in its Qur anic form. Their desire to establish a righteous,
God-guided kingdom can be seen, perhaps, as a revolt against what
they viewed as the pervasive corruption and sinfulness of the Byzan-
tine and Sasanian empires, reflected in their adherence to what the

The Expansion of the Community of Believers

143

Believers considered erroneous doctrines (such as, in the Byzantine
case, the idea of the Trinity). On the other hand, the Believers’ ambi-
tion to establish the rule of God’s law throughout the world— by
conquest if necessary— can be seen as a continuation of, or analogy
to, the ideologies of world conquest that, as we have seen, were part
of both the Byzantine and Sasanian imperial traditions.

There were also, of course, powerful material incentives at work
during the Believers’ expansion; hopes for material gain may have
drawn some people into the movement, and material benefits doubt-
less helped solidify many individuals’ adhesion to the movement.
But these material factors are not in themselves sufficient to explain
the expansion. For one thing, such material incentives always ex-
isted but only contributed to a sudden expansion movement when
placed in the context of the organizing ideology provided by the
Believers’ movement. Indeed, the material incentives for expansion
were inextricably tied to the ideological underpinnings of the Be-
lievers’ movement, so that the two dimensions were complemen-
tary, not contradictory. The Believers were motivated by religious
commitment but saw the material benefits that came with their ex-
pansion as the natural consequence— or, rather, the divinely ordained
consequence— of their success in creating a righteous new order. In
their view, the influx of wealth that followed their conquests and
expansion was nothing less than God’s grace to them for having
adopted His cause.

The Believers’ ambition to establish the writ of God’s word as
widely as possible was apparently given special urgency by their con-
viction that the Last Judgment was imminent. This mood of apoca-
lyptic expectation— in which, presumably, they followed the lead of
the prophet Muhammad himself— made it important to get on with
the business of creating a righteous order so that, when the End
came, those who could be counted among the Believers would at-
tain paradise. This may also explain the early Believers’ desire to ex-
tend their domains to Jerusalem, which many apocalyptic scenarios

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

depicted as the place where the events of the Last Judgment would
be played out. They may also have believed that the amir al-muminin,
as leader of this new community dedicated to the realization of God’s
word, would fulfill the role of that expected “last emperor” who would,
on the Last Day, hand earthly power over to God.

4

sg'ge

The Struggle for
Leadership of the Community,
34-73/655-692

In the generation after Muhammad’s death in 632 C.E. (that is, from
about 31/650 until 73/692), the community of Believers was torn
apart internally by a bitter dispute over the question of leadership.
This dispute manifested itself particularly in two periods of open
strife among the Arabian leadership of the Believers’ movement,
which we can call the First and Second Civil wars (35-40/656-661
and 60-73/680-692, respectively). Because many of the key partici-
pants in these events were actually related to one another by blood or
marriage, the Civil Wars— particularly the First— have something of
the quality of an extended and very bitter family quarrel. The loss
of unity manifested in the Civil Wars has made them very painful
events for many Muslims up to the present. For many contempo-
raries, it was simply heartbreaking that the companions of Muham-
mad, who had worked shoulder to shoulder for over two decades—
and with resounding success— to spread God’s word and to establish
the rule of God’s law on Earth, should now come to blows. Later Mus-
lim tradition, reflecting this discomfiture, referred to these events
as fitan (singular, fitna), a Quranic word meaning “seduction” or
“temptation”— in this case, implying the temptation to pursue personal

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

power and worldly advantage at the expense of communal or spiritual
interests. It is not clear when this term is first used, but it may go back to
the Civil Wars themselves.

Background of the First Civil War

As we have seen, on the death of Muhammad in 11/632, the Believ-
ers in Medina agreed to recognize Abu Bakr as their political leader.
This act not only secured the succession but also institutionalized
the notion that the Believers should remain a single, united commu-
nity. We also noted that Abu Bakr was succeeded bv ‘Umar ibn al-
Khattab (ruled 13-23/634-644) and then by ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan
(ruled 23-35/644-656) and how under these leaders the first great
wave of expansion of the Believers’ movement took place. There can
be little doubt that these first leaders of the community were recog-
nized by the Believers because, at the time they were selected, they
embodied in important ways the central values to which the Believ-
ers were dedicated. The Believers at this time were still very much
united in their goals and outlook, and all three men chosen to lead
them had been close associates of Muhammad from early in his
career. Those who held the position of leadership bore the title amir
al-mu’minin, “commander of the Believers,” a title about which I shall
have more to say presently.

We should not allow the apparent smoothness of succession to
mislead us into thinking that the question of leadership was simple
or clear-cut, even in those early days. For one thing, the Qur’an
seems supremely unconcerned with the question of temporal lead-
ership. It offers no explicit guidance whatsoever on how succession
is to be arranged or even on the requirements for leadership of the
community. Nor, apparently, had Muhammad clearly designated
anyone to succeed him. It was therefore not a straightforward mat-
ter for the early Believers to decide what leadership of the commu-

The Struggle for Leadership of the Community, 34-73/655-69 2

147

nity meant, let alone who should exercise it or how the selection
should be made, and in fact each of the three commanders of the
Believers was chosen in a different manner. As we have seen, Abu
Bakr was acclaimed leader at a meeting involving many Medinese
Helpers and some Meccan Emigrants. 'Umar was appointed by Abu
Bakr on his deathbed to be his successor. ‘Umar, on the eve of his
own death, named six leading contenders for leadership of the com-
munity and instructed them to meet as a council (shura) and come
to unanimous agreement on which one of them should be his suc-
cessor. (To provide the conferees with an incentive to avoid dead-
lock, he also left instructions that if they had not reached unanimity
within a few days, those in the minority should be killed.) Numer-
ous reports also suggest that some people may have refused to rec-
ognize one or another of the new commanders of the Believers for a
time after their selection. Many of these reports involve the proph-
et’s cousin and son-in-law 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, although it is not clear
how many of them are later inventions designed to bolster the claim
of ‘Ali’s descendants. There are reports involving other persons as
well.

The fact that Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthman each received broad
support on their accessions, however, enables us to deduce a few
things about what the early Believers seem generally to have been
concerned with in choosing their leaders. All three had been close
associates of Muhammad during his lifetime, and their dedication to
the Believers' movement was beyond any doubt. Although they were
all from the tribe of Quraysh and were Meccan Emigrants (like most
of Muhammad’s earliest followers), each was from a different clan of
Quraysh, and none was from the prophet’s clan of Hashim. Their
broad acceptability to the early community suggests that the Believ-
ers generally did not yet see narrow genealogical or lineage criteria,
beyond their membership in Quraysh, as a decisive factor in choos-
ing their leaders— in striking contrast to the social traditions of
Arabia. Rather, their close association with Muhammad and their

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MUHAMMAD AND THF. BELIEVERS

reputation for piety and upright behavior seem to have been the para-
mount concerns in their selection.

The Believers’ more or less consistent support of Abu Bakr, ‘Umar,
and, during the first years of his reign, ‘Uthman, was doubtless
facilitated by the fact that during these roughly twenty years the
Believers’ movement was enjoying phenomenal worldly success,
probably beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. As we have seen, during
this time they vanquished their opponents in Arabia and expanded
their presence in new areas at a pace that must have suggested to
many that God was, in fact, on their side, and that their goal of es-
tablishing a public order based on their understanding of God’s
word was, in fact, in accord with God’s will. The glow of such suc-
cess, which had brought to them resources, lands, and slaves, prob-
ably made it easier for many to ignore whatever irritations or com-
plaints they may have had— to dwell on which, in the context of
such God-granted success, might have seemed not only petty but
even positively blasphemous. But conditions appear to have changed
during the reign of ‘Uthman, and dissatisfaction with ‘Uthman’s
leadership of the community became increasingly acute, starting
sometime around 30/650-51— that is, about twenty years after Mu-
hammad’s death.

A number of practical factors can be proposed to explain this in-
creasing tension among the Believers. By the early 30s/650s, the
Believers had to go farther afield from their amsar to wage raids and
campaigns of conquest, and the areas to be raided or conquered
were less developed, more rural, and hence less rich in booty than
the rich lands of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt that had been conquered
earlier. There were also more migrants coming to the amsar as mu-
hajirun among whom stipends had to be divided. There are hints in
the sources that the governors tried to reduce or eliminate stipends
altogether, and this doubtless led to some grumbling.

Another sore point involved the disposition of the conquered
lands. Almost immediately after the conquests, there had emerged a

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149

TEXT OF QUR’AN 8 (ANFAL/SPOILS): 41

Know that whatever you take as booty, one-fifth is for God and His
apostle and the close kinsmen and orphans and poor and the ibn al-
sabil. . . (The last term, usually translated “wayfarer,” is interpreted
by some as poor Believers or poor muhajirun. The implication is that
the four-fifths not reserved for God and His apostle— or later, for the
state— should fall to the conquerors as booty.)

dispute between the soldiers who had participated in the campaigns
and the amir al-muminin, ‘Umar, over this issue. The soldiers wished
to see all conquered lands divided among themselves, with only the
traditional one-fifth reserved for the amir al-muminin ; they pointed
to Qur’an 8:41 and to the prophet’s division of the lands of Khaybar
as warrant for their claim. ‘Umar (and later ‘Uthman), on the other
hand, argued that conquered lands whose inhabitants were still in
occupation— which in most districts were the majority— were differ-
ent from the regular soldiers’ booty of war and became collective
property of the whole community; the inhabitants of the land should
remain on them and pay taxes for the benefit of all of the Believers.
Only abandoned lands, in their view, were booty to be divided
among the soldiers. The picture is not clear, however; many places
reached ad hoc agreements with the conquerors, and sources pro-
vide very contradictory and confusing accounts of how landholding
and taxation actually developed.

In addition to the tension over distribution of lands, moreover,
there was resentment among many of the soldiers who had actually
effected the conquests (or, as time went on, those soldiers’ sons), be-
cause some well-connected individuals from the tribe of Quraysh,
such as Talha ibn ‘Ubaydallah and Zubayr ibn al-‘Awwam, increas-
ingly emerged as large landowners of great wealth. But this came about

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

through caiiphal grants or through various real estate transactions
(including trades for properties in Arabia), not because they had par-
ticipated in the conquest, which is what irked the soldiers. One of
‘Uthman’s governors in Iraq, Sa‘id ibn al-‘As, enraged the soldiers in
an address by referring to Iraq as “a garden for Quraysh”; his arrogant
remark sparked a mutiny— led by a hero of the conquests there,
Malik al-Ashtar al-Nakha‘i— that eventually caused Sa'id to be ejected
from the town by the Kufans.

A further practical problem that faced the amir al-muminin, par-
ticularly by ‘Uthman’s time, was that of management of what was
becoming a far-flung empire. As the areas controlled by the Believ-
ers grew, the proper supervision of distant military commanders,
governors, sub-governors, tax agents, and the sometimes turbulent
amsar themselves, w’ith their mixed tribal populations, became ever
more challenging. Moreover, this was happening at a time w'hen the
core of the Believers’ movement, those from Mecca and Medina,
w'as changing; as the years passed, more and more of the Believers
who had actually known the prophet died off, and many others
were becoming too old to be active as military commanders or gov-
ernors. ‘Uthman and his main subordinates increasingly had to look
to a younger generation of Believers to hold important posts; yet
the qualifications and commitment of many of these younger Be-
lievers were less obvious to those around them. Indeed, one of the
charges raised against ‘Uthman w?as that of using “youths” in impor-
tant posts.

In addition to these practical concerns, there were probably other
factors related to social and economic realities that generated tension
among the Believers, but of which little record has survived. These
may have included social disagreements among tribesmen of various
tribes now living in close proximity in the amsar. The earlier settlers
of the amsar saw themselves being swamped by increasingly large
waves of newer immigrants from Arabia, including both new fighters
and families of those already there. In addition, there was competition

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151

among individual leaders or tribal groups for influence with the lo-
cal commander or governor, disputes over pay and benefits received
from (or demands of military service to) the state, and squabbles
stemming from the tribesmen’s differing access to private economic
activities such as pastoralism, commerce, or artisanship.

Also very important was a growing sense among the Medinese
Helpers and some other Arabian Believers, especially those early
converts of humble origins, that the affairs (and financial benefits) of
the new state were being increasingly dominated by powerful mem-
bers of Quraysh. Abu Bakr had followed closely the policy inaugu-
rated by Muhammad himself in his last years of providing important
posts to some of those Meccans who had earlier been among his bit-
terest opponents— the policy of “conciliation of hearts” that had so
incensed some of his earliest followers. Abu Bakr s appointment of
Khalid ibn al-Walid, ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, and Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan, all of
whom had joined the Believers’ movement late in Muhammad's life,
can be seen in this light. On his accession, ‘Umar moderated this
policy, and relied more heavily for important appointments on those
who had been early adherents of the prophet; he dismissed some,
like Khalid ibn al-Walid, whom he considered to be too concerned
with worldly affairs. Yet his policy was hardly consistent in this re-
gard; he retained ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, widely known for his worldly orien-
tation, as governor of Egypt after ‘Amr conquered it.

As important as these practical issues may have been, however,
there is good reason to think that the internal tensions that afflicted
the community of Believers in the 30s/650s also revolved around the
question of piety and how it related to leadership of the community.
Competition over land, pay, status, and influence were important
not only in their own right, but especially because the Believers saw-
in them indications that some of their leaders were not acting in
accordance with the high principles of piety (including equitable
treatment of all Believers) that were a central concern of the Believ-
ers’ movement. Differences in status or influence or wealth were

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

irksome, but people had long been familiar with such things; what
was intolerable to many Believers seems to have been the thought
that their leaders should be lax in trying to eliminate such inequities,
or worse still, should be actively engaged in favoritism, giving some
Believers an advantage over others. This concern came to a head
during the time of the third amir al-muminin, ‘Uthman— resulting, as
we shall see, in his murder.

A number of ‘Uthman’s policies seem to have aroused sharp op-
position. One charge raised against him was that of favoring mem-
bers of his own family, the Umayyads, for important (and probably
lucrative) positions such as key governorships. For example, he re-
moved two governors in Iraq who were well-known companions of
the prophet and heroes of the conquest, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas and
Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari, and replaced them with his half-brother
Walid ibn ‘Uqba and another relative, ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Amir ibn
Kurayz (who was also granted by ‘Uthman large date plantations in the
vicinity). When Walid ibn ‘Uqba was forced to resign in disgrace
(for drunkenness), ‘Uthman replaced him with another Umayyad,
his second cousin Sa‘id ibn al-‘As. He also took the governorship of
Egypt out of the hands of the redoubtable ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, who had
conquered it and then managed its affairs and who was very popular
with his troops, and replaced him with ‘Abd Allah ibn Abi Sarh, a
foster brother and close ally of ‘Uthman and his family. The new
governor may have been under orders to tighten central control over
Egypt’s finances, which would have compounded his unpopularity,
as revenues formerly retained in the province were forwarded to Me-
dina. In Syria, ‘Uthman placed the governorship in the hands of his
younger kinsman Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan; he had, admittedly,
been first appointed by ‘Umar, but ‘Uthman increased his power by
giving him control over the main garrison at Hims as well as over
Damascus. ‘Uthman’s detractors took these signs of family favoritism
as a moral failing on his part. It has been suggested that ‘Uthman
was, as amir al-muminin, merely trying to ensure firm control over

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155

the increasingly complex affairs of the empire by relying on individ-
uals over whom, as a relative, he had strong personal influence. It is
impossible to know which of these motivations was uppermost in
‘Uthman’s mind, but it is worth noting that 'Uthman distributed
many estates from the conquered lands, not only to his Umayyad
kinsmen, but also to important leaders from many groups, including
some of the leaders of the conquests, such as Jarir ibn ‘Abd Allah and
Sa‘d ibn Abi Waqqas. 'Uthman was not deaf to complaints of im-
piety, and he was able to dismiss relatives who were suspected of
misdeeds; as we have seen, his half-brother Walid ibn 'Uqba was
dismissed as governor of Kufa (and flogged) for drinking wine, which
sowed deep enmity between ‘Uthman and Walid’s family, notwith-
standing their close family ties.

‘Uthman was also criticized for matters that had nothing to do
with worldly gain, however, and those allegations highlight the fact
that he was faulted above all for his perceived moral failings— his
lack of piety— when, as amir al-muminin, he was expected by the
Believers to be a paragon of piety. A few accounts in the traditional
sources describe minor alterations in the pilgrimage ritual made by
‘Uthman. Despite their apparent insignificance and despite the fact
that the Qur’an is vague on how to do the pilgrimage (as it is on de-
tails of most rituals), these alterations seem to have caused conster-
nation among some people, perhaps because the pilgrimage rituals
had been affirmed by the prophet himself. Among the most impor-
tant of ‘Uthman’s “innovations,” however, may have been his deci-
sion to codify the Qur’an text.

The stories about this are many and confused; some scholars ar-
gue that the Qur’an text as we have it was already codified at the
time of Muhammad’s death, but many reports tell of people collect-
ing parts of the revelation that survived the prophet only in people’s
memories or in scattered, partial written copies. One stream of tradi-
tion holds that ‘Uthman asked a team of companions led by Zayd
ibn Thabit to collect and compare all available copies of the Qur’an

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

and to prepare a single, unified text. This aroused opposition not
perhaps because of the procedure itself, but because once the new
Qur’anic “vulgate” was established, ‘Uthman had copies sent to the
main amsar with orders that they be used there in place of regional
versions that were considered authentic by their followers and that
these earlier copies be burned. Despite this, several of the earlier ver-
sions of the Qur’an survived— for example, those associated with the
early Qur’an reciters Ibn Mas'ud (died 33/653) in Kufa, Ubayy ibn
Ka‘b (died 29/649 or 34/654) in Syria, and Abu Musa al-Ash'ari (died
42/662) in Basra, among others, whose copies (or memories) could not
be blotted out. There were also copies of parts or all of the Qur’an in
the hands of some of the prophets widows and of Abu Bakr, ‘Umar,
‘Ali, and other companions. Ibn Mas'ud is said to have refused to
destroy his copy when ‘Uthman’s vulgate arrived in Kufa, but in any
case the readings of companions who had been teaching those
around them how to recite the text could easily have survived in their
memories and been copied down again later, even if the original
variant codices were destroyed. (Vestiges of these codices seem to
survive in compilations of recognized Qur’anic variant readings that
form part of the science of Qur’anic recitation.)

All of these factors, then, contributed to the rising tide of criticism
against ‘Uthman’s conduct as amir al-muminin. Open opposition to
his rule seems to have broken out first in the amsar of Fustat in
Egypt and Kufa and Basra in Iraq. Groups of dissidents from these
towns then marched to Medina to confront ‘Uthman himself. The
traditional Muslim sources provide us with lengthy reports about the
events of the mutiny and those that followed, which we call the First
Civil War; our sources refer to these events as the first fitna, using a
pejorative Qur’anic word meaning “temptation, seduction” (by the
lure of worldly advantage). The goal of all these reports is either to
demonstrate ‘Uthman’s guilt or to exculpate him (or, similarly, to
provide moral judgments on other participants in the events). Hence
it is difficult, if not impossible, to reach a clear verdict today on the

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155

relative responsibility of different actors through the thicket of charges
and countercharges these reports provide. We can discern quite
clearly, however, the basic course of events, the individuals and groups
involved, and the main issues at stake because most sources regardless
of tendency agree.

This much seems clear in evaluation of ‘Uthman’s role in these
events: Whether or not he engaged in controversial innovation or was
guilty of moral failings, real or perceived, he seems to have lacked the
decisiveness of character needed to deal effectively with the problems
with which, as amir al-muminin, he was confronted. His prior history
showed no outstanding activity, military or otherwise, except for his
early decision to follow Muhammad and his generous support of the
Believers’ movement from his own personal fortune. Perhaps he was
too inclined to leave important decisions to others, including his own
relatives, whose good judgment he trusted; perhaps his trust was
sometimes misplaced; perhaps he failed to anticipate or even to rec-
ognize the depth and character of discontent and tension within the
community he led. In any case, the mutiny against him inaugurated
a sequence of events that saw the Arabian Believers— hitherto the
core of the Believers’ movement— fragmented in a bitter battle for
leadership.

The Course of the First Civil War (35-40/656-661)

Although critics of ‘Uthman’s regime were active in several centers,
including Kufa (where they had, as we have seen, driven out his gov-
ernor Sa'id ibn al-‘As) and Basra, it was a group of agitators from the
garrison of Fustat in Egypt who played the leading role in the un-
folding of events that led to the First Civil War. After raising de-
mands against ‘Uthman’s governor of Egypt, ‘Abd Allah ibn Abi
Sarh, these agitators made their way toward Medina to confront
‘Uthman himself, arriving in late 35/May 656. There they were

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joined by groups of insurgents from Kufa and Basra; this joining of
forces suggests that there may have been some coordination of activi-
ties even before they marched on Medina. For several weeks 'Uthman
(or his supporters) and his opponents engaged in negotiations to deal
with the insurgents' grievances, but as time went on his critics grew
bolder and his supporters seemed to dwindle in number. Eventually,
the aged amir al-mu’minin, besieged in his house in Medina, was
attacked and killed (end 35 /June 656).

The fact that the amir al-muminin could be murdered in his own
home by a group of provincial malcontents demonstrates that
‘Uthman had lost the effective support of those longtime Believers
in Medina who, under other circumstances, could surely have de-
fended him and dispersed the rebels. Evidently the native Medi-
nese Helpers, who were distressed at the degree to which they saw
themselves increasingly sidelined in the distribution of influential
positions and valuable properties by powerful men of Quraysh,
were no longer inclined to rescue ‘Uthman. As for ‘Uthman’s Quraysh

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kinsmen, many seem to have made only halfhearted efforts to
defend him— either because he had antagonized them by his poli-
cies or because they had concluded that his cause was hopelessly
compromised— and some may even have encouraged the dissidents.
These included the ambitious Talha, the aggrieved ‘Amr and Walid,
and many others. The prophet’s esteemed widow ‘A’isha, “mother of
the Believers,” still only in her early forties, may or may not have
incited the rebels by letter, but her decision to leave Medina on pil-
grimage just when the mutiny was coming to a head makes it clear
that she had no desire to exert her considerable influence among
the Believers to calm the rising tide of opposition to 'Uthman, even
in dire circumstances. Ali ibn Abi Talib, who perhaps had more in-
fluence than anyone with the population of Medina, must have
been torn, as he believed himself to be more entitled to the office
‘Uthman held; at any rate, he was not able to prevent ‘Uthman’s
death, and sources disagree on how hard he tried. It is difficult to
avoid the impression that by the time of the mutiny, many leading
members of the community in Medina were already anticipating
‘Uthman's abdication or removal from office and were maneuver-
ing to secure what they thought would be the best outcome for
themselves. It may be that some of these figures miscalculated mat-
ters and encouraged the mutiny in the hope that it would merely
force ‘Uthman to change his policies, only to see events get out of
hand.

The immediate beneficiary of ‘Uthman’s death was Ali ibn Abi
Talib, the prophet’s cousin and husband of his daugher Fatima. He
seems to have had the strong support of the Medinese Helpers and
of some of the mutineers, particularly those from Kufa; they consti-
tuted the shi'at ‘Ali, the “party of Ali” (for now merely his political
bloc, but eventually to become the nucleus of the Shi‘a, who held—
and still hold— Ali and all his descendants in special reverence).
The day following ‘Uthman’s murder, Ali received the oath of alle-
giance as amir al-muminin in the mosque of Medina. He had very

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little support from other members of Quraysh, however, some of
whom aspired to the leadership themselves. Leading figures from
Quraysh simply left Medina quickly without swearing allegiance to
'Ah—or withdrew after they had given it and then repudiated it— to
gather in Mecca, their hometown. ‘A’isha, shocked to learn of the
accession of ‘Ali (whom she is said to have detested because he had
questioned her virtue many years earlier), remained in Mecca after
her pilgrimage and gathered her close relatives Talha and Zubayr,
whose claims she supported, around her. The Umayyads who hap-
pened to be in Medina at the time of ‘Uthman’s death— notably
Marwan, at this time the Umayyad clan’s patriarch— also left and
gathered in Mecca.

From Medina, ‘Ali quickly named new governors for various prov-
inces, intending to replace nearly all those who had served ‘Uthman,
some of whom had been unpopular. Mecca and Syria, however, re-
jected ‘Ali’s claims to lead the community. In Syria, ‘Uthman’s kins-
man Mu'awiya, the longtime governor, argued that ‘Ali could not
claim to rule until he had brought to justice ‘Uthman’s killers, who
were now in his entourage.

In Mecca, ‘A’isha rallied most of Quraysh opposed to ‘Ali and they
now called for vengeance for the slain ‘Uthman, despite the fact that
they had done so little to save him. They also called for the conven-
ing of a shura or council to decide the question of who should lead
the community. Not only Talha and Zubayr, but also ‘Uthman’s
grown sons and many other powerful members of Quraysh joined
the opposition, including ‘Uthman’s former governors of Yemen,
who came with much wealth. Deciding that they should go to Basra
to gather forces there before attacking ‘Ali, they set out in 36/Octo-
ber 656. Arriving in Basra, they skirmished with ‘Ali’s governor and
his troops and eventually took control of the city.

'Ali set out to confront them. He sent his son Hasan, along with
the leader of the Kufan mutineers against ‘Uthman, Malik “al-
Ashtar” al-Nakha‘i, ahead to Kufa to secure it from ‘Ali’s governor,

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Abu Musa, who though pious was only lukewarm in his support of
Ali. There Hasan quickly raised an army of Kufans to join Ali,
who arrived and made camp east of the city. When Ali’s force was
ready, he marched on Basra. Both Ali’s army and that of his Meccan
opponents were multi-tribal, and most tribes had members in both
armies, some backing Ali, some backing A’isha and her followers.
This created hesitation in the hearts of many of the soldiers; more-
over, there were in each army people who thought it was wrong for
Believers to fight other Believers openly and who therefore withdrew
and refused to back either side. The actual battle (called the Battle
of the Camel because the epicenter of the fighting was around the
camel carrying A’isha’s litter) took place not far from Basra, and it
cost many lives on both sides. But Ali’s forces carried the day, and
both Talha and Zubayr were killed. Ali promptly took control of
Basra (which remained, however, a strong center for pro-cUthman
sentiment for many years); he also sent A’isha back to Medina with
strict instructions that she stay out of politics thereafter. A number of
prominent Meccans in A’isha’s army evaded capture; some of them
eventually made their way to join the Umayyad Mu'awiya, who had
remained in Syria. Ali eventually went back to Kufa, which became
his main base of activity.

Ali’s choice of governors to replace those of ‘Uthman gives us
some idea of the goals of his regime. Where 'Uthman had relied
heavily on his own Umayyad kinsmen, Ali relied on the Medinese
Helpers (whom he sent as governors to Medina, Egypt, Kufa, and
Basra before the Battle of the Camel) and members of his clan of
Hashim (selected as governors for Yemen, Basra after the Battle of
the Camel, and Mecca). (The main exceptions were two members
of other Quraysh clans who were very loyal to Ali; Muhammad ibn
Abi Bakr was sent as a replacement to Egypt, and another Quray-
shite was made governor in eastern Arabia). One surmises that his
intent was to place the Believers’ movement and the new state once
again in the hands of those who, in his view, were most likely to lead

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it in the spirit of the prophet and his insistence on strict piety. It was
intended to be a decisive departure from the leadership and policies
of ‘Uthman, roundly criticized for his impiety, who had relied on
kinsmen from that clan of Quraysh— the Umayyads— who had long
resisted Muhammad’s message and whose commitment to it ‘Ali
(and the Helpers) still considered suspect.

Ali now had control, more or less, of the Hijaz, Iraq, and Egypt
(although in the latter there was a strong faction that called for re-
venge for the slain ‘Uthman and held aloof from Ali’s governor). He
now turned his attention to the sullen opposition of Mu'awiya, who
for almost twenty years had been governor of Syria and who had not
yet tendered his recognition of Ali as amir al-muminin. Ali’s envoys
invited Mu‘awiva to obedience, but Mu'awiya knew that recogniz-
ing Ali would mean his own dismissal as governor of Syria. From
Mu'awiya’s point of view, furthermore, Ali’s acclamation as amir al-
muminin by the Medinan mob that had murdered his kinsman
'Uthman was invalid. Whereas Ali might accuse Mu'awiya of being
a lukewarm Believer, slow to join the movement and a participant in
the worldly minded regime of ‘Uthman, Mu'awiya could point out
that Ali’s supporters included the mutineers themselves, whom Ali
had never punished even though they were guilty of the unpardon-
able sin of killing a fellow Believer. It is not surprising that a number
of prominent early Believers, such as the leader of the conquest of
Iraq, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, decided that they could back neither
party in clear conscience and so withdrew in self-imposed isolation
for the duration of the First Civil War.

Mu'awiya’s political position was strengthened in late 36/early
657 by his conclusion of an alliance with ‘Amr ibn al-'As. The two
were not natural allies; Amr had borne a grudge against the Umayy-
ads ever since ‘Uthman had removed him from the governorship of
Egypt, and there was some suspicion that the Egyptian mutineers
had been instigated in part by Amr. Yet Amr also knew that Ali,
whose policies revealed a strong preference for Medinese Helpers

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161

and Hashimites, would never agree to make him part of his admin-
istration. His one hope of regaining his governorship of Egypt was
to ally himself with Mu'awiya, which he now did, in exchange for
assurances that he would again govern it. Fortunately for Mu'awiya,
the divisions among the Arabian Believers in Egypt— the soldiers—
meant that ‘Ali’s governors there had their hands full and were in no
position to threaten Mu'awiya’s Syrian base, at least for the time be-
ing. ‘Amr’s job was to make sure it never happened.

At the end of 36/May 657, 'Ali assembled his army in Kufa and
marched out to confront Mu'awiya and to force his submission. In
Syria, meanwhile, Mu'awiya likewise gathered his troops and moved
toward the Euphrates to block ‘Ali’s advance. Neither leader had the
unwavering support of the people they ruled, as many on both sides
thought it wrong that Believers should march against one another in
open warfare. The two armies drew near each other in June, near
the town of Siffin on the Euphrates, between Raqqa and Aleppo. A
long period of desultory skirmishing and fruitless negotiation ensued
between the two leaders. A pitched battle finally occurred in Safar in
37 /late July 657 and lasted several days, with heavy casualties. Finally,
Mu'awiya’s forces appeared one morning with copies of the Qur’an
hoisted on their lances, a gesture taken by many in 'Ali’s army as an
appeal to stop fighting and let the dispute be settled by the principles
of their holy book— which, whatever their disagreements, was the
thing that united the two sides. The fighting stopped at once; in
'Ali’s camp, some of those who had been lukewarm supporters of the
idea of marching against Mu'awiya in the first place now pressed ‘Ali
to negotiate, while others insisted that he press the offensive, feeling
themselves on the verge of victory. Those in favor of negotiation pre-
vailed. ‘Ali reluctantly agreed to submit the dispute to arbitration, to
take place at a neutral venue in a few months’ time, and equally re-
luctantly accepted his supporters’ demand that he appoint as his ne-
gotiator Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari, his erstwhile governor of Kufa. ‘Ali’s
followers were evidently impressed by Abu Musa’s piety, but ‘Ali

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doubtless would have preferred someone who, unlike Abu Musa,
backed him unequivocally. Mu'awiya appointed ‘Amr ibn al-‘As as
his negotiator.

The divisions among ‘Ali’s supporters grew more acute as he
marched his army back to Iraq. Although the majority still agreed
with his decision to submit the rivalry over leadership to arbitration,
a sizable minority grew increasingly vocal in their rejection of the
idea of arbitration. Perhaps fearing that they might be called to ac-
count for their role in ‘Uthman s murder, this minority now argued
that ‘Ali, by agreeing to arbitration, had taken the decision out of
God’s hands— that is, out of the hands of the soldiers who battled “in
God’s way”— and put it into the hands of mere men, the arbitrators.
This, they held, was a grave sin, and they called on ‘Ali to repent for
it, and to express their view they began to circulate the slogan, “No
judgment but God’s!” These ultra-pious Believers were dedicated
to strictly righteous behavior in accordance with the Qur’an and de-
manded such righteousness, especially from their leaders. In their
view, by agreeing to arbitration, 'Ali and his followers had not only
squandered any claim to lead but had actually left the faith itself and
had to be fought as unbelievers. After a time they withdrew from
'Ali’s army and encamped at a place called Nahrawan, some dis-
tance from Kufa. They came to be called Kharijites (Arabic khawarij,
“those who go out”), although the exact significance of their name
remains unclear. Perhaps they were so designated because they “went
out” from 'Ali’s camp or because by breaking solidarity with 'Ali they
were felt to have left the community of Believers; or perhaps their
name is a more positive reference to “coming forth in the way of God”
(for example, Q. 60:1).

The arbitrators convened, probably in Dumat al-Jandal in north-
ern Arabia between Syria and Iraq in late 37/spring 658. The details
of their discussions are obscure, but they seem to have tried to settle
the question of leadership of the community of Believers by referring
to the Qur’an. As a first step, they agreed that ‘Uthman had been

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unjustly murdered, but they were unable to reach further agreement
and broke up, calling for the convocation of another shura of leading
Believers to decide who should be amir al-muminin. Whether or not
this decision was the result of a ruse by Mu'awiya’s negotiator, 'Amr,
as claimed by pro-'Alid sources, is hard to ascertain. But whatever its
authority, announcement of this decision had major consequences.
Mu'awiya and his followers now found themselves vindicated in
their insistence on seeking vengeance for ‘Uthman’s murder, in par-
ticular against ‘Ali and his followers, who included the murderers.
Furthermore, Mu'awiya was some time thereafter acclaimed in Syria
as amir al-muminin. The position of 'Ali as amir al-muminin, on the
other hand, was undermined by the arbitrators’ announcement, and
‘Ali promptly denounced it and called on his supporters in Kufa to
prepare to march, once again, against Mu'awiya in Syria.

Before doing so, however, 'Ali had to deal with the Kharijites
gathered at Nahrawan. These self-righteous pietists, having with-
drawn from ‘All’s forces in protest over his actions and policies,
now considered anyone who recognized ‘Ali’s leadership to be sim-
ilarly guilty of sin and, for this reason, eligible to be killed as an
apostate, an ex-Believer. A number of people in the vicinity of Kufa
had been done in by them, and ‘Ali’s soldiers were unwilling to
embark on a new campaign against Mu'awiya, leaving their fami-
lies unprotected in Kufa, unless the Kharijites were either won over
or eliminated. 'Ali made a number of efforts to secure the Kharijites’
allegiance once again, all of which were rebuffed by the Kharijite
leaders— although a large number of individuals did accept his of-
fers of immunity and withdrew quietly from the Kharijite ranks.
Filled with pious zeal and convinced that ‘Ali and his men were
now apostates, the remaining Kharijites felt that they had no choice
but to fight them until they vanquished the “unbelievers” or met
their fate as martyrs in what they considered to be God’s way. They
attacked ‘Ali’s larger forces and were cut down almost to a man
(end 37 /May 658).

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The Kharijites are commonly described as the “first sect” in Islam,
as if they were an offshoot or aberration from the original principles
espoused by the Believers of Muhammad’s day. But in fact, the in-
tense piety and militancy of these early Kharijites represented the
survival in its purest form of the original pietistic impetus of the Be-
lievers’ movement. They can therefore be considered the best repre-
sentatives in the generations following the death of the prophet of
the original principles of the Believers’ movement of Muhammad’s
day— although they may have followed an extreme form of these
principles, because the prophet himself seems to have been more
flexible and practical than they in his dealings with his opponents. It
is possible— although the evidence is scant— that the intensity of
their commitment was rooted in a conviction that the Believers were
the vanguards establishing God’s kingdom on Earth in preparation
for the Last Judgment that was soon to dawn (or that was, through
their actions, already dawning).

The massacre at Nahrawan was a pyrrhic victory for ‘Ali. He had
secured his home base, Kufa, but the slaughter of something like fif-
teen hundred Kharijites, among whom were a large number of early
Believers well known for their exemplary piety, undermined Ali’s
moral claim to lead the community. Moreover, after the battle, Ali’s
Kufan forces made clear their reluctance to embark on a new cam-
paign against Mu'awiya, whose forces (as they knew from Siffin) in-
cluded many tribesmen from their own tribes. Ali was forced to re-
main in Kufa and consider his options.

These options became increasingly limited. Mu'awiya’s position,
already buoyed by the declaration of the arbiters at Dumat al-Jandal
and the Syrians’ recognition of him as amir al-mu’minin, was further
strengthened by developments in Egypt. There, as we have seen,
Ali’s governor Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr faced a determined (and, it
seems, growing) body of troops who remained incensed at the mur-
der of 'Uthman and were therefore reluctant to recognize Ali’s lead-
ership. Learning that Ali was preoccupied with the Kharijites,

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Mu'awiya dispatched ‘Amr ibn al-‘As with a strong detachment of
troops to Egypt. These joined forces with the Egyptians already
opposed to ‘Ali and destroyed Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr’s army. ‘Ali s
governor was caught and killed shortly thereafter. By early 38/August
658, Egypt was once again firmly in the hands of ‘Amr ibn al-'As, its
former conqueror, and solidly in Mu'awiya's camp.

‘Ali’s cause also began to show signs of unraveling closer to home. A
near-mutiny in Basra was quelled but revealed the erosion of his sup-
port even in Iraq; and a temporary, but sharp, quarrel with his cousin
cAbd Allah ibn al-‘Abbas, whose backing was important to him and
whom he could hardly afford to alienate, revealed (as had numerous
other episodes) ‘Ali s tendency to antagonize people and to misjudge
situations. This quality had probably been a major reason for his fail-
ure to win recognition (even from his Quraysh kinsmen) commensu-
rate with his ambition and early role in the community of Believers.

The arbitrators apparently now met for a second time in the
month of Sha'ban 38/January 659, this time at Mu'awiya’s behest, at
Adhruh (today in southern Jordan). But inasmuch as ‘Ali had dis-
missed his arbitrator, Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari, after the first round, this
meeting was really a public-relations ploy by Mu‘awiya. In the meet-
ing, Mu'awiya’s negotiator, ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, tricked the pious Abu
Musa into declaring that he considered ‘Ali deposed as amir al-
mu’minin by pretending that they were in agreement that both con-
tenders should be dismissed; but once Abu Musa had made his state-
ment, ‘Amr stood up and declared his recognition of Mu'awiya for
the position. Whatever propaganda advantage Mu'awiya may have
gained from this episode, however, does not seem to have translated
into any immediate advantage on the ground.

Mu'awiya now took the initiative in his struggle with ‘Ali. He be-
gan sending periodic raiding parties from Syria to the Euphrates re-
gion and into northern Arabia, hoping to win over groups under ‘Ali s
control, or those who remained neutral (38/659). ‘Ali also sent a few
raids into the Euphrates region but seems to have been preoccupied

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in the period 38-40/659-661 with his confrontation with the Khari-
jites. Many of the latter who had gathered at Nahrawan had dispersed
before the battle, and numerous groups of them continued to disrupt
southern and central Iraq. Driven now not only by their pious scru-
ples but also by the desire to avenge their many kinsmen and fellow
Kharijites who had fallen at Nahrawan, they demanded that people
reject ‘Ali as impious, sometimes killing as apostates anyone who re-
fused to join them. Ali was able to suppress these uprisings, but his
killing of yet more Kharijites only deepened the hostility of those who
remained.

Mu'awiva now dispatched a force to Arabia under his general Busr
ibn Abi Artat, which marched through the Hijaz and into Yemen
and Hadramawt. Whether or not the many reports of atrocities com-
mitted by Busr during this campaign are to be believed, or whether
they are to be ascribed to anti-Mu'awiya propaganda, remains un-
clear; likewise, it is not clear whether Ali took any significant mea-
sures to counter this advance. But the campaign resulted in the ex-
pulsion of Ali’s governors and brought all the major towns of these
regions— not only the symbolically all-important holy cities of Mecca
and Medina, but also Ta’if, Tabala, Najran, Sana", and others— under
Mu'awiya’s control.

Ali’s position was now dire; his control was limited to Iraq, and even
there he was plagued by the continuing opposition of the surviving
Kharijites and lukewarm support of many others. As he was attempt-
ing (yet again) to rally his forces for a campaign against Syria, however,
he was struck down in the mosque of Kufa by a Kharijite assassin (Ra-
madan 40/}anuary 661). Ali paid the ultimate price for his long, un-
happy relations with these ultra-pious erstwhile supporters.

Upon Ali’s death, his followers in Kufa recognized his son Hasan
ibn Ali as their leader and amir al-muminin. Hasan had none of his
father’s ambition, however, sitting passively in Kufa awaiting devel-
opments, rather than marching against Mu'awiya. He entered into
desultory correspondence with Mu'awiya, who meanwhile gathered

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a large army of his own. Mu'awiya soon enough marched with his
army down the Euphrates and secured Hasan’s agreement to abdi-
cate; Hasan agreed to recognize Mu‘awiya as amir al-muminin, in
exchange for a lifetime pension that allowed him the leisure to pur-
sue his many love affairs, and he never played a role in politics again.
Mu'awiya was duly recognized by the Kufans in Rabic II 41 /August
661. Except for a few bands of Kharijite holdouts, the Believers once
more were united under a single amir al-muminin.

The First Civil War had involved economic and other practical
issues but was fundamentally a debate over the nature of future lead-
ership in the community of Believers, particularly its relationship to
issues of piety and morality. In the bitter struggles that took place
after ‘Uthman’s death, each claimant or group based its claim on a
different set of criteria for what constituted appropriate leadership for
the Believers.

The most central criterion, to which all groups and contenders
made frequent appeal in some way, was that of piety, reflecting the
central thrust of the original Believers’ movement itself. The most
unalloyed expression of this was found among the Kharijites, for
whom piety was not merely an important criterion; it was the only
criterion that mattered. In their view, only the most pious Believer
was entitled to lead, and they rejected decisively all considerations of
kinship, ethnicity, or social status. Any leader who was, in their eyes,
adjudged as sinful had either to do penance or to be removed from
office, for to follow a sinful leader was itself a sin that disqualified one
from membership in the community of true Believers and endan-
gered one’s future in the afterlife.

Other groups tended to combine concern for piety with other cri-
teria. Many pious Believers linked it with the notion of “precedence”
(sabiqa)— that is, they felt that the community could best be led by
men who had been among Muhammad’s first and most loyal backers,
because these would understand better than anyone else how to lead
the community in accordance with Muhammad’s ideals. Prominent

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early Emigrants, such as Talha ibn ‘Ubayd Allah, Zubayr ibn al-
‘Awwam, ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Awf, and ‘Ammar ibn Yasir adhered to
this view, as did many Medinese Helpers, and all of the first four
commanders of the Believers— Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthman, and ‘Ali —
had impressive credentials in this regard. It was a claim that was di-
rected especially against those who had opposed the prophet, or had
joined him only late in his career, such as many of the Umayyads.

A third criterion for leadership that emerged at an early date was
that of kinship to the prophet. ‘Ali, as the prophets cousin and son-in-
law, is presented by later tradition as having raised this claim most
forcefully, even though he was no more closely related than other
cousins of the prophet, such as ‘Abd Allah ibn al-‘Abbas. On the
other hand, ‘Ali’s close kinship with Muhammad obviously did not
persuade most of the community to favor him over his three prede-
cessors, so other considerations must have been uppermost in their
minds. Moreover, in several places the Qur’an emphasizes that ties
to other Believers outweigh even the closest ties of kinship (for ex-
ample, Q. 9:23).

Finally, there were those who asserted a claim to leadership based
on effectiveness in practical matters, service to the Believers’ move-

TEXT OF QUR’AN 9 (TAWBA/REPENTANCE): 23-24

O you who Believe! Do not take your parents and siblings as friends
if they prefer disbelief (kufr) to Belief. Whosoever of you draws close
to them, these are the oppressors. Say: if your parents and children
and siblings and spouses and tribe and your wealth that you earned
and the trade whose sluggishness you fear are dearer to you than
God and His Apostle and striving ( jihad) in His way [that is, for His
cause], then wait until God brings His Decision. For God does not
guide sinful peoples.

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ment, and recognition by members of the community. Many dis-
paraged (and still disparage) this claim as merely a cover for the
seizure of power by those who lacked “real” qualifications of the
three kinds enumerated above, such as 'Amr ibn al-'As or Mu'awiya
ibn Abi Sufyan, who had been slow to embrace the Believers’ move-
ment and were sometimes less than models of piety. But they had in
their favor the strong argument that in his final years Muhammad
himself had pursued the policy of "conciliation of hearts,” by which
he gave even some of his bitterest former opponents important posi-
tions. This policy, which was also followed by Abu Bakr, was based
on recognition of the fact that the Believers’ movement, if it was to
succeed in the world, needed to be in the hands of decisive men
having the practical capacity to lead. Someone suggested to 'Umar,
on his deathbed, that he appoint as his successor his son ‘Abd Allah,
who was highly esteemed for his piety, but 'Umar replied, “How can
I appoint someone who can’t even divorce his own wife?” In mak-
ing this statement, he was presumably voicing not merely his own
judgment on his son’s character but also the sentiment of many who
knew that force of personality was a crucial ingredient in successful
leadership.

The fact that piety was such a central feature of the early Believ-
ers’ movement helps explain why the First Civil War was such a
traumatic event for the Believers— as it was happening, in the de-
cades after it, and for Muslims ever since. The Believers had faced
other setbacks with relative equanimity— serious military defeats by
armies of impious states, for example— but had responded to these
setbacks with alacrity and increased vigor and confidence, even
though such setbacks could have been viewed by them as a sign that
they no longer enjoyed God’s full favor. They do not seem to have
done so partly, perhaps, because the Qur’an itself makes clear that
the righteous would have to fight unbelief and unbelievers, and
hence some setbacks would be inevitable and simply spurred the
Believers to greater efforts. But the First Civil War was different. It

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not only split the community of Believers; it divided its members on
precisely that issue around which their communal identity was fo-
cused, the question of piety or morality. They were in open disagree-
ment over whether ‘Uthman had acted justly or not; and after his
assassination, they were in even sharper disagreement over whether
the mutineers and other main actors had acted morally. Moreover,
regardless of what stand one took on the mutiny, it meant that the
very leaders of the community— the persons w'ho should, by all to-
kens, be most morally distinguished— had been called into doubt
regarding their morality, because one could hardly claim that both
‘Uthman and ‘Ali were sinless. Only much later, after the passage
of a generation or more had made the community numb to the pain
of the events of the First Civil War and keenly aware of the danger of
fragmenting the community that lay in any attempt to insist that one
side or the other was at fault, did the community come to consider
both ‘Uthman and ‘Ali (along with Abu Bakr and ‘Umar) rashidun,
“rightly guided ones,” whose leadership was to be acknowledged as
valid by everyone.

Between Civil Wars (40-60/661-680)

Muawiya's final emergence as the sole amir al-muminin in 40/661 —
called the “year of coming together” (cam al-jamaca ) by Muslim
tradition— ushered in two decades of relative calm. During this pe-
riod the Believers once again turned their attention to implementing
the movements goal of spreading God’s rule and ensuring a righ-
teous order in areas they controlled.

Mu'awiya appointed as governor men whose loyalty to him and
capacity to manage the affairs of their sometimes turbulent prov-
inces were unquestionable. Many were Umayyads, such as his sec-
ond cousin Marwan ibn al-Hakam and Sa‘id ibn al-‘As, rivals whom
he played against one another in serving as governor of Medina, or

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171

‘Abd Allah ibn Amir, a distant relation who was his first governor of
Basra. Other governors were not Umayyads but were selected for
special reasons. He entrusted Mecca to the distinguished Khalid ibn
al-As, of the Makhzum clan of Quraysh, who had served as ‘Umar’s
governor there and was well liked in the city. Egypt was, naturally, in
the hands of Amr ibn al-As (of the Sahm clan of Quraysh), who with
Mu'awiya’s consent appointed his younger nephew ‘Uqba ibn Nafi‘
(of the Fihr clan of Quraysh) to invade and govern North Africa.
Mughira ibn Shu'ba, a man of Thaqif (the tribe of Ta’if) was ap-
pointed governor of Kufa; an early follower (and bodyguard) of the
prophet, he was in some ways an unsavory character, but Mu'awiya
doubtless valued his ability, toughness, and reliable support. The
most interesting of Mu'awiya’s appointments, however, was Ziyad
ibn Abihi (“Ziyad, son of his father"), a man of dubious paternity but
undeniable executive and financial skill, who had been raised among
the Thaqif tribe of Ta’if. He had been a stalwart supporter of Ali
during the civil war, and though relatively young had been appointed
by Ali as his governor of Fars province because of his brilliant ability.
After Ali’s death, Ziyad remained in Fars and in control of the
provincial treasury and for some time held aloof from Mu'awiya.
Mu'awiya finally won him over by recognizing him as his own half-
brother (that is, as the son of his own father, Abu Sufyan, now safely
in the grave and unable to object). This generous gesture paid hand-
some dividends for Mu'awiya, who appointed Ziyad— henceforth
known as Ziyad ibn Abi Sufyan— to the governorship of Basra, re-
placing Ibn Amir in 45/665; later Ziyad was appointed governor of
Kufa as well, so that he ruled the entire eastern portion of the em-
pire. He did so with great effectiveness, and Mu'awiya never regret-
ted his decision.

Mu'awiya’s key governors supervised a resumption of the conquests
into new areas. By this time the institutions of the Believers’ regime
had matured into something that had the unmistakable features of
a state— not only a standing army, but also a network of tax collectors

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and a rudimentary chancery and bureaucracy. For this reason, the
character of the conquests after 660 differed also in some measure
from the earliest conquests of the 630s and 640s. Above all, those
early conquests had been driven by the Believers’ burning desire to
supplant what they saw as the worldly, sinful regimes of Byzantium
and Sasanian Iran and to erect in their stead a new, righteous order
dedicated to the observance of God’s law. The initial conquests had
a centralized impetus but had nonetheless been carried out ad hoc,
in response to the unpredictable developments on various fronts; and
we might say that the embryonic regime in Medina that provided
such centralized direction as existed was dwarfed by the military
forces that were at its service. By Mu'awiya’s day and thereafter, on
the other hand, the conquests gradually became more institutional-
ized and routinized. The standing armies now operated from a num-
ber of well-established, fixed bases— the amsar, particularly Hims,
Fustat, Kufa, and Basra— to which soldiers returned at the conclu-
sion of a season’s campaigning; and campaigns were for the most
part undertaken on a regular basis and for a predetermined duration
(often six or twelve months). Moreover, although the idea of spread-
ing God’s rule— waging “jihad on God’s behalf” (jihad fi sabil
allah)— and of establishing the Believers’ righteous regime remained
important, the new campaigns were also driven by the practical
needs of the state for a steady flow of booty and captives to meet the
payroll of soldiers’ stipends and pensions. In short, by Mu'awiya’s
time the conquests had become less an expression of a charismatic
moral-religious imperative, as they had been in the early years of
the Believers’ movement, and more an institutionalized state policy.
This transformation coincided with the gradual disappearance from
the scene of the last companions who had actually known the
prophet.

An important front of new expansion during this period was in
North Africa. Under ‘Umar and ‘Uthman, the Believers’ armies
had established themselves as far west as Tripolitania in Libya, but

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173

despite some notable victories farther west they had only launched
ephemeral raids into the Byzantine Provincia Africa (roughly mod-
ern Tunisia). During Mu'awiya’s time, armies penetrated farther
west and established a new misr at Qayrawan (50/670), which be-
came in subsequent years not only the main military staging point
for invasions into the western Maghrib but also an important eco-
nomic and cultural center. There was at first a period of peaceful
coexistence with the settled Christian Berbers of the Awraba tribe
in the Aures mountains led by their chief Kusayla (or Kasila), and it
seems possible that they joined the Believers’ movement. But a little
later still, with the re-appointment of ‘Uqba ibn Nafi' (in 62/681, just
after Mu'awiya’s death) there seems to have been a change of policy,
which resulted in warfare between the Berbers and the Arabian Be-
lievers. This did not go well at first— ‘Ubqa ibn Nafi1 was killed near
Biskra, and the Believers were almost forced to abandon their new
misr at Qayrawan, but eventually Kusayla was defeated. Resistance
to the Believers’ expansion by the Berber population would continue
for many years, but the establishment of Qayrawan did much to con-
solidate the Believers' presence in the eastern Maghrib; soon regular
raids in this area became an important source of booty, particularly
of slaves, for the Umayyad rulers.

Another wave of expansion, meanwhile, was also being under-
taken in the east, dependent administratively on Basra and Kufa.
Abd Allah ibn Amir dispatched troops to Sistan and reconquered
Zaranj and then Kabul, but resistance tightened up thereafter.
His successor in Basra, Ziyad, neglected barren Sistan and concen-
trated instead on expanding into the richer areas in and adjacent to
Khurasan. He sent several campaigns to advance eastward from the
misr at Marv against the Hephthalites or White Huns (a nomadic
people who lived along the Oxus river), and eventually sent fifty
thousand men from Basra to be stationed permanently in Marv to
strengthen the garrison there. Ziyad's action must also be seen in the
context of his concern for stabilizing Basra and strengthening his

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control over it and Kufa; Basra in particular had become crowded
with new immigrants from Arabia, so the transfer of many fighting
men helped reduce crowding and concomitant tensions in the town.
Besides suppressing numerous Kharijite risings, he also took mea-
sures in both Kufa and Basra to rationalize (and perhaps to reduce?)
soldiers’ pay, and to reorganize the settlements in order to improve
his ability to administer the towns. After Ziyad’s death in 53/673, his
son and eventual successor as governor of Basra, ‘Ubavd Allah ibn
Ziyad, pursued similar policies.

A final area of expansion during Mu'awiya’s reign was to the
north, against the Byzantine Empire. Besides the regular— almost
annual— summer campaign into Anatolia, Mu'awiya sent troops at
least twice in efforts to seize the Byzantine capital, Constantinople.
The first (49/669) returned quickly, but the second, which was coor-
dinated with a naval assault, besieged the city for three years (54-
57/674-677) before finally giving up. On the maritime front, Arwad
(off the Syrian coast) and Rhodes were occupied at this time (53/673),
and Crete was raided.

Yet under the surface of relative calm that prevailed during
Mu'awiya’s reign, the fundamental disagreements among the
Believers— especially among those of the west Arabian ruling elite-
remained unresolved. Sometimes they came to the surface, as for
example in the brief confrontation between Mu'awiya’s governors
in Kufa and a group of malcontents led by Hujr ibn ‘Adi al-Kindi.
Hujr and his companions, erstwhile supporters of ‘Ali, increasingly
objected to the practice of Mu'awiya’s governors, Mughira and Zi-
yad, of praying for forgiveness for ‘Uthman and cursing ‘Ali during
mosque services. (This policy of cursing one’s opponent— called
sabb— had apparently been started by ‘Ali during the civil war, but
Mu'awiva and his backers proved only too glad to respond in kind.)
Hujr and his group heckled the governors and pelted them with
pebbles to express their displeasure; they were eventually hunted
down and sent off to Mu'awiya in Syria, where Hujr and a few others

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were executed. Although a relatively minor episode, it reveals that
the issues of the First Civil War— especially the question of ‘Uthman’s
piety and whether his murder had been justified and the legitimacy
of 'Ali’s claim to lead the community— were still unresolved and lay
dormant.

Hujr’s rising also may have been related to other, more mundane,
issues. An account related by the ninth-century Byzantine chroni-
cler Theophanes notes that Mu'awiya reduced the stipends of sol-
diers in Iraq and increased them in Syria. Although unsupported by
other sources, this report is suggestive and plausible. Perhaps this
policy, if in fact it was a policy, was simply Mu'awiya’s attempt to re-
ward the Syrian troops who had remained loyal to him during the
civil war and to punish the soldiery of Iraq who had backed ‘Ali. Or
perhaps Mu'awiya (who, as we have seen, launched at least two at-
tempts to seize Constantinople from the Byzantines) thought that
the central challenge the Believers faced, now that the Sasanian dy-
nasty had fallen, was the contest with Byzantium and so adopted a
policy on stipends to emphasize the importance of the Byzantine
front and to reward the soldiers who fought on it. In any case, such a
policy— reducing the stipends of Iraq’s soldiery— could easily have
helped push soldiers discontented for other reasons over the line to
outright rebellion.

Mu'awiya’s reign also masked other tensions. He had apparently
acquired large estates in Medina and elsewhere, sometimes by
methods that left the previous owners feeling plundered and re-
sentful. These he seems to have worked as investments; one report
relates that he held properties in Yamama that were worked by four
thousand slaves, and several dams bearing inscriptions mentioning
him, still visible today in Medina and Ta’if, represent vestiges of
his efforts to develop his holdings. It seems likely that many in the
community were envious and resentful, particularly Quraysh or
Medinese whose parents had been close followers of the prophet
and who therefore thought that they should be prime beneficiaries

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of the Believers’ regime but who realized that they were being left
behind.

It is worth reiterating at this point that the early Believers’ move-
ment had an ecumenical quality that allowed it to accommodate
within itself, in addition to those Arabians who followed Qur’anic
law, many Jews and especially (it seems) Christians who shared a
commitment to righteous living. It is generally assumed that the tax
administration in Mu'awiya’s time was manned largely by Syrian
Christian or (in Egypt) Coptic scribes and in Iraq by Zoroastrian
scribes of Aramaean or Persian stock. Mu'awiya’s chief financial
administrator was a Syrian Christian, Sergius (in Arabic, Sarjun)
ibn Mansur. (His son John— John of Damascus— would serve later
Umayyads in the same capacity before being recognized as a saint of
the Byzantine church.) Christians seem to have participated even in
the Believers’ military operations. Mu'awiya himself had, from his
earliest days in Syria, established close ties with the powerful Kalb
tribe that dominated the Syrian steppe, a tribe that had long been
monophysite Christian. To cement the alliance, he married May-
sun, the Christian daughter of the chief of the Kalb, Malik ibn Bah-
dal, and Kalbite troops formed an important contingent in his mili-
tary, receiving a large stipend for their services. As we shall see, some
of the troops in the Umayyads’ Syrian army, even during the Second
Civil War, were still Christian. The north Mesopotamian monk
John bar Penkaye, who wrote about 67/687, chronicles the begin-
ning of Muhammad’s teaching and the Believers’ movement and
how they made raids each year; he notes that among the Believers
were “Christians, not a few,” of various denominations.

The relative “openness” of the early Believers’ movement to par-
ticipation by Christians (and, perhaps, Jews and Zoroastrians?) thus
seems to have continued beyond the middle of the seventh century.
Mu'awiya still chose to style himself amir al-muminin, “commander
of the Believers,” as a number of contemporary inscriptions show,
and some papyrus documents into the middle of the first century

The Struggle for Leadership of the Community , 34-73/655-692 177

AH/seventh century C.E. refer to the “jurisdiction (or maybe the
era) of the Believers" ( qada ’ al-muminin). There is, as yet, no docu-
mentary indication that the ruling elite, or people in general, were
giving up this broader identity as Believers in favor of a more nar-
rowly defined identity as "Muslims,” distinct from other righteous
monotheists. That shift, as we shall see, would not take place until
after the Second Civil War.

The Second Civil War (60-73/680-692)

Although Mu'awiya had emerged in 40/661 as the victor of the First
Civil War, the basic questions over leadership that had been at issue
during the war had never really been settled; they had rather been
made temporarily moot by the fact that the logical claimants for
leadership at that time had been reduced to one. But on Mu'awiya’s
death in Rajab 60/April 680, the latent tensions dividing the ruling
elite among the Believers quickly bubbled to the surface. Hoping to
secure a smooth succession, Mu'awiya in his last years had issued a
decree naming his son Yazid ibn Mu'awiya heir apparent. Yazid was
not an unlikely candidate; he had led one of Mu'awiya’s campaigns
against Constantinople and was the son of Mu'awiya’s Kalbite wife
Maysun, so he was well liked on both counts by the Syrian army.
Consequently, there were few objections to Mu'awiya’s designation
of him as heir apparent, except from several members of the Arabian
elite, some of whom aspired to lead the community themselves.
Significantly, all of them were of Quraysh, and all but one was the
son of an earlier amir al-muminin, or of someone who had claimed
that office during the First Civil War: 'Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, Hu-
savn ibn 'Ali, 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr, 'Abd Allah ibn ‘Umar,
and ‘Abd Allah ibn al-'Abbas. After Mu'awiya’s death, the last three
recognized Yazid as amir al-muminin; presumably their opposition
had been mainly to Mu'awiya’s efforts to get the oath of allegiance

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to Yazid sworn in advance, and not to Yazid himself. But Husayn
ibn ‘Ali and ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr refused to recognize Yazid.
Slipping away from Medina to avoid the Umayyad governor there,
they sought sanctuary in the sacrosanct confines of the haram of
Mecca.

In Kufa, the many people who had formerly supported ‘Ali took
hope on Mu‘awiya’s death and wrote to ‘Ali’s younger son Husayn
in Mecca, inviting him to come to Kufa, where, they assured him,
he would find strong support in making a bid to become amir al-
muminin. (As we saw earlier, his older brother Hasan had abdicated
in favor of Mu'awiya and withdrawn from politics at the end of the
First Civil War.) We can at this point begin to refer to the people
who were loyal to ‘Ali and his descendants as “Shi'ites” or “the Shi'a,”
even though at this early state the “party of ‘Ali” (Arabic, shi 'at 'Ali)
had not yet developed the full range of theological doctrines found in
later Shi‘ism.

To prepare the way for a bid to be amir al-muminin, Husayn sent
to Kufa his cousin Muslim ibn ‘Aqil ibn Abi Talib, who was warmly
received by the Shi'ites there; he lodged at the house of one of Kufa s
Shi'ite leaders, a man named Mukhtar ibn Abi ‘Ubayd. But the
Umayyad governor, ‘Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, got wind of their plans
and was able to track down Muslim, who was executed for conspir-
ing against the regime.

Husayn, however, had set out for Kufa with a small group of
his family before word of Muslims demise reached him. Outside
Kufa, his little group was intercepted by ‘Ubayd Allah’s troops,
who had been sent to look for him. Negotiations carried out over
several weeks were fruitless; Husayn refused to recognize Yazid as
amir al-mu’minin, nor would he withdraw, and ‘Ubayd Allah would
not let him enter the city. Finally, a battle was fought at Karbala5,
75 km (46.6 mi) northeast of Kufa, where Husayn and virtually all
of his following were cut down (Muharram 10, 61 /October 10,
680).

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POEM OF 'ALI IBN AL-HUSAYN 1BN 'ALI I BN AB1 TAL1B

Said to be the first member of al-Husayn’s family killed at Karbala These
verses were supposedly declaimed by him as he strode into battle against the
Umayyad forces, units of which were led by Shabath ibn Rib'i al-Riyahi and
Shamir ibn Dhi l-]awshan (hemistich 3). The last line is a reference to the
Umayyad governor, ' Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, whose father had been recognized
by the caliph Mu‘awiya as his half-brother. The poem captures some of the
central ideas that would be developed by the Shia, notably the ‘Alids’ legiti-
macy rooted in closeness to the prophet and the idea that the righteous should
wage struggle against tyrants, even in the face of hopeless odds. Whether or
not the poem is authentic, it shows that these ideas were in circulation by the
time of the relatively early author, Abu Mikhnaf (died 157/773-774).

I am ‘All son of Husayn son of ‘Ali;

We and the household of God are closer to the prophet
Than Shabath and Shamir the vile.

I strike you with the sword until it bends.

The blows of a Hashimite youth, an ‘Alid,

And today I will not stop defending my father.

By God, the son of the bastard shall not rule over us!

[Abu Mikhnaf, Maqtal al-Husayn ihn Ali, ed. Kamil Sulayman al-
Jmburi (n.p.: Dar al-mahajja al-bayda’, 2000), 139.]

T he snuffing out of this little insurrection had been an easy task
for cUbayd Allah’s much larger force but was to have momentous
and enduring consequences. Although in the short term it had re-
moved one of Yazid’s rivals from the field, the killing of Husayn —
'Ali’is son and the prophet Muhammad’s grandson, in whose veins
the blood of the prophet flowed— as well as much of his family,
shocked many Believers and contributed to the impression that
Yaziid was impious. The Shi'ites of Kufa who had invited Husayn to

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rebel were now full of remorse for having failed to support him but
for the moment could do little. After the death of Husayn, ‘Ubayd
Allah expelled the Shi'ite leader Mukhtar, who made his way to
Mecca to explore the possibility of joining forces with ‘Abd Allah ibn
al-Zubayr in resisting Yazid’s rule. The aristocratic and dour Ibn
al-Zubayr, however, never one to warm to the idea of cooperating
with anyone who might rival his own claims, rebuffed Mukhtar’s
advances, and Mukhtar withdrew to his hometown, Ta’if, for a
time.

Yazid’s efforts to win support in the Hijaz met with no success. He
invited a delegation of prominent Medinese to Damascus to try to
win them over, but many still nursed feelings of having been in-
jured by Mu'awiya’s policies. Added to this, their reports of Yazid’s
less-than-abstemious lifestyle at court generated further outrage, not
sympathy, among the Medinese, who were shocked that one so lack-
ing in piety could claim to lead the Believers. The Medinese also
resented the Umayyads for another reason; after the First Civil War,
Mu'awiya had confiscated estates in the town from the Medinese,
who had generally backed 'Ali, reducing some Medinese virtually to
the status of serfs. In 63/68Z-683, therefore, the Medinese repudi-
ated Yazid’s claim to leadership and expelled Yazid’s governor, who
had chided the Medinese for interfering with the Umayyads’ reaping
of profits from the land.

In Mecca, Ibn al-Zubayr also repudiated Yazid in an insulting
sermon in which he referred to his reputed fondness for unusual ani-
mals and dissolute living: “Yazid of liquors, Yazid of whoring, Yazid
of panthers, Yazid of apes, Yazid of dogs, Yazid of wine-swoons,
Yazid of barren deserts” (the rhyming qualities of the original are, of
course, lacking in the translation). Ibn al-Zubayr then defeated an
armed force (led by his own brother ‘Arm, who was captured and
killed with exquisite deliberation) that had been sent by Yazid to ar-
rest him. With the Hijaz now in open revolt, Yazid organized a large
Syrian army and dispatched it to the Holy Cities. Prominent in this

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181

force were tribesmen of Kalb and of the still largely Christian tribe of
Taghlib, some of whom reportedly marched with a cross and a ban-
ner of their patron, St. Sergius. The Medinese now expelled all mem-
bers of the Umayyad family and their supporters from Medina-
said to be one thousand strong. Yazid’s army marched south into the
Hijaz and took up a position in the basalt lava field (harm) east of
Medina. After a few days of fruitless efforts to persuade the insur-
gents to recognize Yazid, battle was joined. The Medinese (descen-
dants of the Helpers and many non-Umayyad Quraysh who had
long lived in Medina) seemed to be on the verge of victory, but the
Syrians turned the tide. Many Medinese were killed, including
many Quraysh, and Medina was subjected to three days of pillage.
The so-called “Battle of the Harra” (end 63/August 683) may even
have resulted in the enslavement of some Medinese. Then the de-
feated Medinese were forced to swear allegiance to Yazid as amir
al-muminin.

Yazid’s army now continued its march south toward Mecca to
bring to heel Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, whom Yazid had from the
start seen as his most serious rival. Mecca was besieged for several
weeks (early 64/September 683); during the siege there was desultory
skirmishing, and at one point the Ka'ba (that is, the hangings on it)
were set afire and burned. But in the midst of the siege, word arrived
that Yazid had unexpectedly died in Syria (Rabi‘ I 64/November
683). Learning this, the commander of the Syrian forces, who had
never been very keen on the attack on Mecca or on Ibn al-Zubayr,
broke off the siege and began negotiations with Ibn al-Zubayr, in
which he invited him to march with him back to Syria to accept the
post of amir al-muminin. Ibn al-Zubayr, however, refused to leave
Mecca. The Syrian forces withdrew and headed north to Damascus.

With the death of Yazid, the fortunes of Ibn al-Zubayr seemed to
improve greatly, while that of the Umavyads suffered a serious blow.
Ibn al-Zubayr declared himself commander of the Believers in
64/683. In Syria, some recognized Yazid’s young son Muawiya (II)

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as amir al-mu’minin, but outside Syria and even within it many peo-
ple looked to other possibilities; we have seen that the commander of
Yazid’s army was disposed to recognize Ibn al-Zubayr, as were some
members of the Umayyad family. Ibn al-Zubayr, already recognized
as amir al-muminin in Mecca and Medina, sent a governor to Egypt
and, after a period of confusion in Iraq, managed to bring it, too,
within his sphere, sending his brother Mus'ab there as governor.
Backers of Ibn al-Zubayr again expelled the Umayyads and their
supporters from Medina.

Meanwhile, Mu'awiya II died after only a few months, leaving the
Umayyads in total disarray. Those groups that had been tightly al-
lied to the Umayyad dynasty and therefore had the most to lose if the
office of amir al-muminin were to be held by someone else, naturally
were the most eager to find an Umayyad claimant. These included
especially the chiefs of the powerful Kalb tribe of central Syria,
which had been allied to Mu'awiya I and Yazid by marriage; ‘Ubayd
Allah ibn Ziyad, whose service as governor of Iraq for Mu'awiya
and Yazid made him eager to see a continuance of Umayyad rule
there; and Sarjun ibn Mansur, the Christian chief administrator for
Mu'awiya and Yazid. But some erstwhile supporters of the Umayy-
ads, led by Dahhak ibn Qays (of the Fihr clan of Quraysh) and sup-
ported by the Qays tribes of northern Syria, backed Ibn al-Zubayr,
who was now recognized over the whole empire with the sole excep-
tion of Damascus and its environs. Ibn al-Zubayr duly appointed
Dahhak his governor of Damascus, in absentia. Even the head of
the Umayyad family, the aged Marwan, appears to have been on the
verge of recognizing Ibn al-Zubayr (according to some reports, he
actually did so). But eventually he was persuaded by ‘Ubayd Allah
ibn Ziyad and Hassan ibn Malik ibn Bahdal, chief of the Kalb tribe,
to claim the leadership for himself. The Umayyad family met at
Jabiya, in the Jawlan plateau southwest of Damascus, where Marwan
was recognized by them as amir al-muminin; and, after gathering his
loyal supporters (particularly the leaders of Kalb and of the Judham

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tribe of Palestine), Marwan confronted Dahhak and those who
backed Ibn al-Zubayr at Marj Rahit, northwest of Damascus. In
the battle, Dahhak was killed and his backers, particularly those of
the Qays tribes, were utterly routed, with heavy loss of life (Mu-
harram 65 /August 684). This battle reinforced the close tie between
the Umayyads and the Kalb tribe and stabilized Marwan’s position
in Syria, but it sowed intense animosity between Kalb and its allies
on the one hand and Qays on the other that would continue to fes-
ter for more than a century, bedeviling later Umayyad attempts to
build a unified Syrian army. Marwan quickly moved to consolidate
his power in Syria and Palestine (not least against the claims of rival
Umayyad clan leaders) and then seized Egypt from Ibn al-Zubayr’s
governor by the middle of 65 /early 685. When he died a few months
later, Marwan was able to hand over to his son and successor, the
vigorous 'Abd al-Malik, a secure base on which to restore Umayyad
power.

In Iraq, meanwhile, Ibn al-Zubayr’s grip was being shaken by
developments among the Shi'a of Kufa. Mukhtar ibn Abi cUbayd,
who as we have seen had been expelled from Kufa by Yazid’s gover-
nor 'Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad after the battle of Karbala’, returned in
Ramadan 64/May 684 after more than three years in Mecca and al-
Ta’if. During that time, he had tried repeatedly to interest cAbd Al-
lah ibn al-Zubayr in an anti-Umayyad alliance, but the proud Ibn
al-Zubayr would have none of it. Mukhtar began building a populist
movement among the Shi'ites of Kufa, calling for the establishment
of just rule and succor for the downtrodden. He also called people to
recognize Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya, son of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib by
Khawla, a captive of the Hanifa tribe taken during the ridda, as amir
al-muminin ; Mukhtar asserted that Muhammad ibn al-Hanifiyya
was the rightful claimant not only because of his ‘Alid ancestry but
also because he was the eschatological redeemer (mahdi) whose ar-
rival would vanquish evil and (finally) establish a just regime on
Earth. (This is the first recorded instance in which the concept of

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

the mahdi is evoked among the Believers.) Mukhtar’s movement
won broad support in Kufa not only among the Shi ‘a but also among
Kufa’s many mawali— former captives and their descendants. It also
appealed to a number of the common fighting men, who resented
the dominant elite of the city (regardless of whether the latter sup-
ported the Umayyads or Ibn al-Zubayr). Mukhtar tried to win over
the tribal notables of Kufa also, whose support he deemed indispens-
able, but there was always an implicit conflict between their interests
and the populist, “leveler” nature of Mukhtar’s ideology; one source
reports that the notables complained to Mukhtar, “You have taken
aim at our mawali, who are booty which God bestowed upon us, and
this whole country likewise; we freed [that is, conquered] them hop-
ing for the reward and recompense (of God) in that, and for thanks;
we are not pleased that you should make them partners in our
spoils.”

With tensions running high, word arrived in Kufa in late 66/early
summer 686 that ‘Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, the former Umayyad gov-
ernor who had dispatched the forces that had killed Husayn at
Karbala1, was marching from northern Syria toward Iraq with a Syr-
ian army. Almost two years earlier, a group of Kufans called the
“Penitents” (tawwabun), who regretted their failure to support
Husayn at Karbala5, had marched out to face the same ‘Ubayd Allah
as he marched an army toward Iraq. They met him at ‘Avn Warda on
the border between northern Syria and Iraq and were cut down (Ju-
mada I 65/January 685), but following it, ‘Ubayd Allah had become
bogged down trying to subdue the Jazira region. Now, eighteen
months later, he was ready and had begun his march toward Iraq.
Mukhtar quickly organized a force, commanded by the brilliant
Ibrahim ibn al-Ashtar, and sent it northward to block ‘Ubayd Allah’s
advance.

Ibn al-Zubayr’s governor in Kufa, and the tribal notables who
backed him, immediately took advantage of the absence of most of
Mukhtar’s forces to organize an attack on Mukhtar, whom they

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185

hoped to get rid of once and for all. But Mukhtar was able to recall
Ibrahim, who returned with his men only a few days after his depar-
ture. In the struggle that followed (end 66/July 686), Mukhtar’s
forces went into battle shouting the slogans “Vengeance for Husayn!”
and “O Victorious One, kill!" (the latter a reference to a messianic
redeemer), and those notables who had, under the Umayyads, had
any part in supporting the campaign against Husayn were killed.
When the failure of their rebellion became obvious to the notables,
nearly ten thousand of them fled from Kufa to take refuge in Basra
with Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr, and Mukhtar’s followers razed the houses
of those who had fled. Muhktar exacted an oath of allegiance from
the people of Kufa, promising to avenge the “people of the house”
( ahl al-bayt, used in reference to the prophet's family— here mean-
ing especially ‘Ali and his descendants)— and appointed governors
over Kufa’s dependencies in the east, a vast area that included Arme-
nia, Azerbaijan, Mosul, Hulwan, and the rest of central and north-
ern Iraq.

With Kufa more securely under control, Mukhtar again dispatched
forces under Ibrahim ibn al-Ashtar to deal with the approaching
Umayyad army. Ibrahim’s men, flush from their recent victory in
Kufa, were eager to avenge the deaths of both Husayn and the Peni-
tents, and blocked ‘Ubayd Allah’s passage in northern Iraq, near the
Zab river. Again the tide went in their favor; at the battle of Khazir,
near Mosul, ‘Ubayd Allah’s force was crushed (partly because Qays
contingents in the Umayyad force, still smarting from their defeat at
Marj Rahit two years earlier, deserted), and ‘Ubayd Allah himself and
a number of other important Umayyad commanders were slain (Mu-
harram 67/August 686). This gave Mukhtar control of northern Iraq
as well as Kufa and was a serious setback for ‘Abd al-Malik’s plan to
reconquer the empire.

The revenge of the expelled Kufan notables was not long in com-
ing; encouraged by them, Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr began planning his
effort to reclaim Kufa. By the middle of 67/early 687, they were

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

ready and marched on Kufa. Mukhtar’s forces were defeated in a first
clash at Madhar and were pushed back to Harura5 and eventually to
Kufa itself, which was put to siege. When Mus'ab and his Kufan sup-
porters finally took the city in Ramadan 67/April 687, Mukhtar was
killed, along with six thousand of his supporters.

The elimination of Mukhtar and his movement put Iraq once
more in the control of Ibn al-Zubayr, but his regime thereafter was
hardly calm; the Zubayrids faced numerous Kharijite rebellions in
Iraq, Fars, and especially in eastern Arabia, where a massive rebel-
lion among the Hanifa tribe of the Yamama region of eastern Ara-
bia, led by the Kharijite Najda ibn ‘Amir, removed a large piece of
territory from the Zubayrid realm. In 68/June 688 no fewer than
four different leaders headed pilgrimage caravans to Mecca, repre-
senting those recognizing Ibn al-Zubayr, the Umayyad ‘Abd al-
Malik, the Kharijite leader Najda, and the ‘Alid Ibn al-Hanifiyya.

Meanwhile, in Syria ‘Abd al-Malik had to deal with a variety of
threats to his power before he could think about launching an-
other offensive against Ibn al-Zubayr to recover from the setback
suffered by his forces at the Battle of the Khazir River. In early
67 /summer 686, he had to suppress an uprising led by a leader of
the Judham tribe in Palestine who had declared his support for
Ibn al-Zubayr. He also had to deal with the northern front, where
the Byzantine emperor had organized— and backed with money
and troops— the invasion of the Syrian coastal regions as far south
as Lebanon by a warlike mountain people from the Amanus, the
Mardaites. Only by concluding a costly and humiliating treaty
with the Byzantine emperor was ‘Abd al-Malik able to secure the
Mardaites’ withdrawal. Thus it was in 69/689 that he left Damas-
cus on a first campaign to try to dislodge Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr
from Iraq, but in his absence his distant cousin and rival ‘Amr
ibn Sa'id ibn al-‘As seized Damascus and advanced his own claim
to lead the Umayyad dynasty. ‘Abd al-Malik had to cancel his

Two coins of rivals to the Umayyads. The upper coin, issued by a governor
of ‘Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, was minted in Darabjird, in Fars in western
Iran, in the year 53 (of the Sasanian “Yazdegird era”), corresponding to
683-684 c.E. The name legend by the bust, in Pahlavi, reads ABDULA
AMIR I-WRUISHNIKAN, ‘“Abdullah, amir al-mu minin’’ The lower
image shows a coin issued in Ardashir Khurra (in western Iran) in AH 75,
corresponding to 694-695 C.E., by the Kharijite rebel Qatari ibn al-Fujaa,
whose name appears in the name legend along with AMIR I-WRUISHNI-
KAN, Pahlavi for amir al-mu’minin. The reverse shows a fire altar. In the
obverse margin, the Kharijite slogan la hukma ilia lillah , “There is no
judgment except to God.”

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

campaign and return to put down this rebellion and, eventually,
execute ‘Amr. He also needed to quell the stubborn opposition to
the Umayyads among the Qaysi tribesmen of Qarqisiya’ along the
Euphrates (71-72/summer 691).

It was only in 72/late 691, therefore, that ‘Abd al-Malik was ready
to embark on a definitive campaign against Ibn al-Zubayr’s position
in Iraq. After making contact with the many groups and leaders in
Iraq who had been alienated by Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr’s government
there, ‘Abd al-Malik advanced. He met Mus'ab’s army at Dayr al-
Jathliq on the middle Tigris (somewhat north of modern Baghdad)
and defeated it easily, as many of Mus'ab ’s troops melted away or re-
fused to fight for him. In the end Mus'ab was captured and executed
(mid-72/end 691). 'Abd al-Malik entered Kufa and was recognized
there as amir al-muminin.

'Abd al-Malik then sent his loyal commander Hajjaj ibn Yusuf-
soon to be his governor in Iraq— with a force of two thousand Syrians
against Ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca. This small force was augmented in
the following weeks by others and was joined by another that 'Abd
al-Malik had earlier dispatched to the northern Hijaz to guard Syria
against any attempt by Ibn al-Zubayr to invade it. Hajjaj encamped
first in Ta’if (his hometown) to collect his forces before closing in
on Mecca. Toward the end of 72/March 692, the city was blockaded
and a siege begun; after six months, during which many of Ibn al-
Zubayr’s forces deserted because of the hopelessness of the situation
or were lured away by promises of amnesty, ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr
was decisively defeated and killed in a battle outside the city (Jumada
I, 73/September 692). ‘Abd al-Malik was finally recognized in all the
amsar and their dependencies as amir al-muminin. After twelve years
of strife, the Second Civil War was finally over, and Umayyad rule
had been restored.

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189

Reflections on the Civil Wars

Several noteworthy points emerge from the accounts of the civil
wars. First, in both civil wars, but particularly in the first, one is
struck by how tightly the dispute is concentrated on the issue of who
could best claim to rule the community of Believers. Moreover, it
seems that most people saw the leadership as belonging properly
within a small group— basically Quraysh. (The Kharijites were the
main exception to this view.) This gives the civil wars, particularly
the first, the quality of an extremely bitter family feud, as most of the
principals in the civil wars were related to one another, often quite
closely, by ties of blood or marriage, or at least knew one another
personally.

Second, the civil wars were striking for the savagery with which
they were carried out. There are many episodes in which our sources
describe captives being executed in cold blood, in which sons are
executed before their fathers, or men killed by, or at the order of,
their relatives ('Amr ibn al-Zubayr by his brother 'Abd Allah; 'Amr ibn
Sa'id by ‘Abd al-Malik), in which the vanquished were massacred in
large numbers (Nahrawan, Khazir, Mukhtar’s followers in Kufa, Bat-
tle of the Harra). This may have something to do with the crude
temper of the age and with the brutal manners of many participants,
who were rough and unrefined bedouins or peasants. But it surely
also owed much to the ideological character of many of the conflicts
within the civil wars. This led people to demonize their opponents
as the very embodiment of evil and also made them keenly aware
that a defeated enemy who had not fully repented was, for ideologi-
cal reasons, always a threat to rebel again, so it was safer to eliminate
him. Moreover, the intensely ideological character of the early Be-
lievers’ movement made the elimination of such “allies of the devil”
morally acceptable, even praiseworthy, in peoples’ minds. The Peni-
tents who met their deaths at ‘Ayn Warda were doubtless convinced
of ‘Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad’s status as a representative of the devil;

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Kharijite groups executed as apostates anyone whose observance of
proper Belief did not conform to their own stringent requirements;
the Kufan notables who slaughtered Mukhtar’s mawali supporters
saw them as interlopers who had unjustly usurped their God-given
property rights. But old-fashioned revenge played a large part in many
bloody events as well— whether it was the Umayyads taking revenge
on the Medinese at the Battle of the Harra for their expulsion from
the city and for the murder of ‘Uthman, or Mukhtar’s followers ex-
acting vengeance from the Kufan notables and on 'Ubayd Allah’s
troops for the murder of Husayn.

Third, with the Second Civil War in particular, we are palpably
moving into a new phase in the history of the community of Believ-
ers. The era of the companions of the prophet is rapidly drawing to
a close, and the dramatis personae are now members of a younger
generation who had no memory of the prophet or of the struggles
that shaped his life. One senses an attenuation of the intensely char-
ismatic quality of the early movement, with its clear-sighted con-
cern for piety and observing God’s will; the commitment to piety is
still there, but it has become more routinized and less personal and
is tempered among many Believers with more practical and this-
worldly concerns. The conquests by now apparently had become
less a matter of the personal zeal of individual Believers driven by
visions of an impending Last judgment and more a lucrative form
of state policy intended to keep revenues and plunder flowing into
the treasury.

Fourth, we see in the civil wars— and particularly in the second—
the emergence of those fissures that have, ever since, divided the once-
united community of Believers. ‘Ali’s claims to be amir al-muminin
during the First Civil War become gradually transformed into the
beginnings of a true sectarian movement, Shi'ism, that held the
family of ‘Ali in special reverence; it received its defining event in
the massacre of 'Ali’s son Husayn at Karbala’ in the Second Civil
War, an event that came to be commemorated by later Shi'ite groups,

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191

right down to today, and that gave Shi ‘ism its special identity fo-
cused on the idea of martyrdom as a means of advancing the cause
of the downtrodden. It would be a century and more before Shi ‘ism
would fully refine many of its central concepts, such as the notion of
the imamate or ideal, God-guided leader of the community, but the
later movement has its roots in the First and Second Civil wars.
These events thus became the starting point for the construction of
two different narratives of legitimation in the Islamic community-
one Shi'ite, focusing on the family of ‘Ali, and the other (eventually
called Sunni) focusing on the sequence of actual power-holders, in-
cluding the Umayyads. We have also seen how a third group, the
ultra-pious Kharijites, emerged during the First Civil War; although
constituting only a small minority of Muslims today, they were quite
significant in the first several centuries of Islam.

Fifth, the events of the long, intermittent conflict suggest deci-
sively that the Hijaz, despite being the home of the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina, the cradle and spiritual focus of the early Be-
lievers’ movement, was not an effective base from which to project
power on an imperial scale— and the community of Believers, with
its far-flung amsar dominating most of the Near East, had by the
time of the civil wars ascended to a truly imperial scale. More effec-
tive as bases of power were those areas that had a solid tax base (espe-
cially Egypt and Iraq) and a fairly sizable, stable population. The
Hijaz offered neither of these and increasingly became a political
backwater (or, at least, a side channel) in the history of the commu-
nity of Believers.

Economic and other practical issues surely contributed a great
deal to these conflicts— indeed, it was the fact that so much was at
stake economically that made the struggle worth embarking on for
many participants. The accounts of Mukhtar’s revolt reveal clearly
that Kufa was torn by serious social and economic tensions, pitting
the descendants of the first conquerors, who formed a kind of Arabian
aristocracy, against the descendants of former captives (mawali); at

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

times there was added a heavy overtone of social distance separating
those whose native language was Arabic from those whose mother
tongue was something else. Social and economic tensions of this
kind probably always existed; what is striking is that such grievances
were articulated into a coherent political movement by the claim
that a just leader (or maybe a mahdi, an eschatological savior) would
solve the problem. In other words, the Believers’ movement, even as
late as the Second Civil War, brought with it the conviction that
such routine social injustices and oppression were no longer accept-
able, that a new and more just order was attainable. The Believers’
movement thus mobilized people to act in ways designed, they be-
lieved, to resolve social and economic tensions that were more or less
endemic in premodern society (and maybe in all societies). In this
sense, we must see the ideology of the Believers’ movement as the
prime cause of these historical developments, rather than the latent
economic and social tensions that the movement articulated, for such
tensions are always found.

The very fact that the civil wars were for the most part a struggle
within Quraysh over leadership means that the broader community
of early Believers— especially those non-Arabian Christians and Jews
who had joined in the movement— were not prominently visible in
these struggles. In the Second Civil War, there were moments when
Christians, at least, seem to have been involved. As we have seen,
the Umayyads’ Christian administrator, Sarjun ibn Mansur was ac-
tive in encouraging the Umayyads to make a bid for leadership
against Ibn al-Zubayr after the deaths of Yazid and Mu'awiya II. Did
he really feel himself to be an integral part of the Believers’ move-
ment, or was he just an employee solicitous of the interests of his
employers, the Umayyads, who buttered his bread? The evidence
is inadequate, but at least it is clear that people like Sarjun did not
feel that the movement he served was anti-Christian. The leaders of
the Kalb tribe, and many of their soldiers who formed an important
component of the Umayyads’ troops, were also probably still Chris-

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193

tian. We find no evidence, either, of any effort by Christians or Jews
to exploit the disarray among the ruling elite to break away or over-
throw the Believers’ hegemony, perhaps because they may have felt
themselves to be part of it. These factors suggest that the ecumenical
qualities of the earliest Believers' movement was still alive through
the period of the Second Civil War; but this situation was soon to
change.

5

r,Vrv

The Emergence of Islam

We have seen how Muhammad preached certain religious
ideas that gave rise in western Arabia to an apocalyptically oriented
pietistic movement which, following the name the members of the
movement applied to themselves, we have termed the “Believers’
movement.”

We also examined the basic concepts of this movement, particu-
larly its desire to establish a “community of the righteous” who could
attain salvation on the Last Day and to spread the hegemony of this
community as far as possible in order to realize a righteous political
order— that is, a polity that was guided by the observance of God's
revealed law— in preparation for the anticipated Last Day. We traced
the community’s rapid spread through much of the Near East dur-
ing the seventh century c.E., led by a ruling elite of Arabian origin,
and considered the relationship between this new community and
the indigenous populations (mostly Christian, Jewish, or Zoroas-
trian) that it encountered and came to rule during its expansion. We
also saw how disagreements over the question of leadership within
the ruling elite resulted in two extended periods of brutal civil strife,
with permanent repercussions.

In this chapter we shall see how, during the late first century AH/
seventh century c.E. and early second century AH/eighth century

The Emergence of Islam

195

C.E., the Believers’ movement evolved into the religion we now know
as Islam, through a process of refinement and redefinition of its basic
concepts. Islam, as we understand it today, is thus the direct continu-
ation or outgrowth of the Believers’ movement rooted in the preach-
ings of Muhammad and the actions of his early followers, even
though it would be historically inaccurate to call the early Believers’
movement “Islam.”

The process by which Islam crystallized from the matrix of the
Believers’ movement following the civil wars was partially the result
of intentional efforts made by the ruling Umayyad dynasty and its
supporters and partially the result of a sea change in the perceptions
within the community generally on matters of identity. For this rea-
son, it seems to have been a transformation that took hold gradually
and lasted for a considerable time— several decades at least, perhaps
in some arenas as long as a century. While many aspects of this pro-
cess of transformation remain murky, several dimensions of it are
visible enough to be examined in more detail. These will form the
main rubrics of this chapter. In general, however, we can say that
the Believers, led by the Umayyad dynasty, particularly the amir
al-mu3minin ‘Abd al-Malik and his entourage, seem to have em-
barked on a renewed search for legitimacy, seeking ways to establish
for themselves and for the world at large their right to claim political
supremacy and their right to direct a regime based on what they un-
derstood to be God’s word.

The Umayyad Restoration and Return
to the Imperial Agenda

During the twelve years of the Second Civil War, neither the Umayy-
ads nor any of the other contenders for leadership of the Believers’
movement had enjoyed the calm or security needed to concentrate
their energies on any of the Believers’ fundamental concerns, other

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

than settling the question of who should lead. The final defeat of
cAbd Allah ibn al-Zubayr in 73/autumn 692 marked the effective
reunification, under the leadership of 'Abd al-Malik and the Mar-
wanid branch of the Umayyad family, of the empire established by
the early Believers. With that victory— indeed, even somewhat be-
fore it as its inevitability became clear and ‘Abd al-Malik’s position
became secure— he began to pursue policies demonstrating his con-
cern with resuming what he considered to be the Believers’ funda-
mental agenda.

One activity that ‘Abd al-Malik resumed, which had long been
interrupted by the civil war, was the dispatching of raids and cam-
paigns of conquest in an effort to further expand the borders of the
empire and the writ of God’s law. The Byzantines were the first to
receive such attention. During the civil war, as we have seen, ‘Abd
al-Malik had been forced to buy peace from the Byzantine emperor
on several occasions, including a treaty concluded as late as 70/689—
690; but even before the final defeat of Ibn al-Zubayr, ‘Abd al-Malik
resumed the policy of launching regular raids during the summer
deep into Byzantine territory. This policy was henceforth pursued
vigorously by 'Abd al-Malik and his successors as amir al-muminin,
particularly his sons al-Walid (ruled 86-96/705-715) and Sulayman
(ruled 96-99/715-717). The latter, in fact, organized a massive land
and sea assault on the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, that lasted
more than a year (98-99/summer 717-summer 718) and almost cap-
tured the city. But the restored Umayyads also pursued a policy of
expanding the empire in other areas as well, including significant
campaigns in Tabaristan, Jurjan, Sijistan (Sistan), Khorezm, and be-
yond the Oxus River in the east and into the Iberian peninsula in
the west. The latter region was largely subdued by the commander,
Musa ibn Nusayr, and his lieutenant, Tariq ibn Ziyad, in 92—94/711—
713. ‘Abd al-Malik even dispatched a force to Sind (the Indus Valley,
modern Pakistan), which resulted in the establishment of a colony of
Believers there in 93/711, under the command of Muhammad ibn

The Emergence of Islam

197

al-Qasim al-Thaqafi, a young protege of cAbd al-Malik’s main gen-
eral and govenor of Iraq, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf.

The campaigns of conquest, by this time, were as a matter of pol-
icy mounted regularly and on a large scale, both because they would
spread the writ of God’s law to new areas and because they were in-
dispensable to the regime’s finances: The booty and tax revenues
(including regular levies of slaves) derived from such conquests
provided the regime with the wealth it needed to pay its soldiers. It
might be called a case of the dynasty “doing well by doing good,”
and it is very difficult to decide the relative importance of the mate-
rial and the ideological or religious incentives, if indeed they can be
separated. One cannot deny the immense material advantages of the
expansion policy for the regime. But, it would be too facile to con-
clude that the religious motivation— the desire to extend recognition
of God’s word— was nothing more than a cover for the dynasty’s
cupidity. To do so would be to overlook the fact that the Believers’
movement began and long continued to be one rooted in religious
commitment. Moreover, there survive reports in the Islamic tradi-
tion (which is not generally well disposed to ‘Abd al-Malik or to the
Umayyads) that suggest that cAbd al-Malik was devout and dedicated
to acquiring religious learning in his early years. It therefore seems
best to conclude that the expansion was driven by an indissoluble
amalgam of religious and material motives.

Another key dimension of the early Believers’ movement, as we
have seen, was its focus on the coming of the Last Judgment, which
many early Believers seem to have expected to be imminent. Such
apocalyptic convictions may have been the force that impelled some
Believers to abandon their usual day-to-day concerns and enlist in
the distant and arduous campaigns to spread the writ of God’s word
that are usually called the “Islamic conquests.” The pull of material
incentives must also have played an important part in drawing people
into the movement, of course, but would mainly have come into play
after the process of expansion had developed obvious momentum;

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199

so it seems likely that the ideological motive— fear of the impending
Last Judgment— was paramount in the movement’s early years and
only tapered off slowly. Indeed, as we have seen, the movement’s very
success in the mundane world probably heightened the religious
fervor of some, who perceived in it a sign of God’s favor for the Be-
lievers and an affirmation of their religious claims. The divisions of
the civil wars may, likewise, have been viewed by some contempo-
raries as the tribulations (fitan) that were expected to usher in the
Judgment, which may be why in later Islamic tradition the Quranic
word fitna is used to refer to the civil wars. (Another reason was that
the civil wars were seen, retrospectively, as occasions when some
Believers had succumbed to the temptation or seduction— also
called fitna— of worldly power.)

Once his position as amir al-mu3minin was secure, ‘Abd al-Malik
seems also to have wanted to remind the Believers of the reality, and
perhaps the imminence, of the Last Judgment. He may even have
wanted to advance for himself the claim to being that final, just ruler
in whose day the Judgment would begin and who would deliver
to God sovereignty over the world. After all, by resuming annual at-
tacks on the Byzantines, he had again embarked on an active strug-
gle against the unbelievers, as the final ruler was supposed to do. His
desire to honor this scenario may have been what led him to order
the construction of one of the most magnificent works of early Is-
lamic architecture, the sumptuous building in Jerusalem usually
called the “Dome of the Rock.”

The Dome of the Rock has been the subject of extensive debate
among scholars who wish to recover its original purpose and mean-
ing. Some have argued that it was built by ‘Abd al-Malik during the
Second Civil War, when Mecca was controlled by his rival cAbd
Allah ibn al-Zubayr, in order to provide an alternative destination for
pilgrims. Others have argued that its construction should be seen as

Map 6. Later campaigns of expansion

The Dome of the Rock. 'Abd al-Malik had this splendid monument built
on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem— site of the Jews’ Second Temple,
destroyed centuries before by the Romans— in the 690s C.E. The build-
ing’s extensive interior inscriptions are noteworthy for their anti-trinitarian
emphasis; its octagonal plan suggests a commemorative building.

a “victory monument”— a statement of religious domination directed
toward Christians (and, to a lesser extent, toward Jews), visible proof
that the Believers were “here to stay” in the city that was most cen-
tral to the other two faiths.

The Dome of the Rock poses numerous interpretive puzzles. It is
not a mosque. It is constructed on the octagonal plan of a late an-
tique Christian (and earlier pagan) martyrium— a design that was
well known in the Byzantine architecture of the Near East. Yet the
building was clearly not intended to be a Christian monument, be-
cause its interior is decorated with mosaics bearing lengthy passages
and paraphrases from the Qur’an that reject the idea of the Trinity
(about which we shall have more to say presently). Moreover, it was

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Umm Qays. This town in northern Jordan, overlooking the Sea of Galilee,
is the site of the late antique city of Gadara. It includes this octagonal
martyrium, the plan of which resembles that used for the Dome of the
Rock in Jerusalem, less than 100km (62 mi) away.

constructed on Mount Moriah, the site of the Jewish Second Tem-
ple, where no Christian monument would have been; in the Byzan-
tine period, as we have seen, the Christian authorities of Jerusalem
had refused to construct any religious buildings on the Temple Mount
and had ordered that the site be used as a dumping ground for trash.
Nor can the Dome of the Rock, despite its location, be understood
as an attempt actually to rebuild the Jewish temple; the description
of the temple was well known from the Torah and bore little formal
resemblance to a late antique martyrium.

It seems likely that ‘Abd al-Malik, or his advisers, chose the mar-
tyrium plan because they knew that a building in that form would
be immediately understood by anyone who saw it as a building

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

having religious meaning. But what kind of religious meaning? It is
possible that an assertion of religious supremacy was indeed in-
volved. But recent research on the Dome and associated buildings
suggests that it may also have been intended to symbolize or refer to
paradise and resurrection, particularly as depicted in the Qur’an and
in earlier late antique iconography. Jerusalem, we must recall, bears
a very special relationship to paradise in Jewish, Christian, and later
Islamic tradition, for they all consider Jerusalem— particularly Mount
Moriah— to be the central locality in which the events of the Last
Judgment will take place. It therefore seems plausible to suggest that
the Dome of the Rock and attendant buildings may have been con-
structed to provide a suitably magnificent setting for the events of
the Judgment— particularly, to be the locale in which 'Abd al-Malik
(or one of his successors), as leaders of the righteous and God-fearing
empire of the Believers, would hand over to God the symbols of sov-
ereignty at the moment the Judgment was to begin. 'Abd al-Malik’s
magnificent monument, then, stands as testimony to the continuing
force of the apocalyptic impetus of the early Believers’ movement.

‘Abd al-Malik thus resumed the basic agenda of the Believers’
movement, interrupted by the civil wars: to spread the domain of
God’s kingdom by establishing God’s law. His decree, issued shortly
after the Second Civil War had been concluded, that all pigs in Syria
and Mesopotamia be killed, seems to be an aspect of this policy. In
this and other ways, such as building the Dome of the Rock, he was
helping to prepare his community for the coming Last Judgment.
After twelve years of civil war, however, he was doubtless keenly aware
that he needed to do something more: he needed to find ways to
unify the empire and the community of Believers morally, to refocus
the Believers on the central goals of the mission that Muhammad
had set them on, and to establish the legitimacy of his rule and that
of the Umayyad family. We can see several of his policies as measures
contributing to these broad goals of reunification and rededication to
the Believers’ original ideals. But with these policies came a subtle,

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but fundamental, redefinition of the movement itself, one with which
we still live today, and it is to this that we must now turn.

The Redefinition of Key Terms

‘Abd al-Malik seems to have encouraged the Arabian Believers to
redefine themselves, and the Believers’ movement, in a manner that
was less ecumenical or confessional and open than it had been origi-
nally. The category of “Believer,” which hitherto had included righ-
teous monotheists of several confessions, came to be increasingly
limited to those who followed Qur’anic law. A boundary began to be
drawn between Qur’anic Believers and those righteous Christians
and Jews who had formerly belonged to the Believers’ movement, by
redefining certain key terms that had been current in the commu-
nity since the time of Muhammad— in particular, the words mu min
(“Believer”) and muslim.

As we have seen, when the first generation of Believers came out of
Arabia, sources tell us that they used two terms to refer to themselves:
muminun (Believers) and muhajirun. The latter term (which, as we
have seen, shows up in Greek and Syriac cognates) was a designation
for those Believers who were militarily active and had made reli-
giously motivated emigration, hijra, from Arabia. But as years passed,
the term muhajirun eventually fell out of use. Why this happened is
not clear. Perhaps it was because in the central areas of the empire,
at least— Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt— the conquests were now over
and the whole country was under the Believers’ control, so one could
not do hijra any longer, because hijra had the sense not just of emigra-
tion, but of emigration from an unbelieving society to a place held by
Believers. Alternatively the term muhajirun may have been aban-
doned because one was now dealing not with the emigrants them-
selves but with the children or grandchildren of the original emigrants
from Arabia or with local people who had no connection with Arabia

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at all but who had decided to follow the Believers in observing
Quranic law. The only Qur’anic term that existed for these people
was muslim, meaning “one who submits himself to God’s ordinances”
because he recognized God’s oneness. In the Quran muslim basically
means “monotheist,” and it could therefore be applied also to Chris-
tians, Jews, and other monotheists. But, unlike the Arabian monothe-
ists who followed Qur’anic law, Christians and Jews could also still
be referred to as Christians or Jews. So gradually, the Qur’anic term
muslim underwent a kind of shrinkage, so that it applied now only to
those monotheists who followed Qur’anic law and no longer applied
to Jews and Christians, the adherents of those earlier forms of God’s
revealed law, the tawrat (Torah) and injil (Gospel). In other words,
the old Qur’anic term muslim acquired at last the meaning it retains
until today, meaning a member of a religious confession that reveres
the Qur’an, recognizes Muhammad as its prophet, and is distinct
from other monotheists— a Muslim. At the same time, mumin was
taken to apply to all of those who followed Qur’anic law (not, as ear-
lier, only to those who lived righteously), so that it became effectively
synonymous with muslim.

In the present state of our knowledge, we can only speculate about
why this shift in the identity of the Believers occurred. Perhaps this
“hardening” of boundaries, which resulted in a clear-cut distinction
between Muslims (that is, erstwhile Qur’anic Believers) and Chris-
tians or Jews (that is, former Believers who had observed Christian
or Jewish laws), was a reaction against specific aspects of Christian or
Jewish doctrine and the Christians’ or Jews' unwillingness to relin-
quish those doctrinal obstacles— in particular, perhaps, the Chris-
tians’ persistence in embracing the doctrine of the Trinity or both
the Christians’ and Jews’ unwillingness to accept Muhammad’s sta-
tus as prophet and source of revelation. cAbd al-Malik and his entou-
rage may gradually have come to the conclusion that earlier expecta-
tions that Christians and Jews would abandon these beliefs were
unrealistic.

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Emphasis on Muhammad and the Quran

The central component of this rethinking of the Believers’ identity
involved an increased emphasis on the significance to the Believers
of Muhammad and the Qur an, and in this process 'Abd al-Malik
seems to have played a decisive role. The earliest Believers knew
from the Qur an that God’s word had been revealed numerous times
in history to various prophets, of whom Muhammad was the most
recent. This notion was consonant with the original ecumenical
quality of the Believers’ movement and is reflected in inscriptions
and graffiti in which Believers appear to make statements of faith
professing their reverence for God and several prophets, such as Mu-
hammad and Jesus.

Beginning around the time of ‘Abd al-Malik, however— in the last
quarter of the first century AH/end of the seventh century c.E.— we
find Muhammad’s name mentioned with increasing frequency in
the Believers’ official documents; moreover, these references suggest
that identification with Muhammad and his mission and revelation
was coming to be seen as constitutive of the Believers’ collective
identity. The first inscriptions of any kind to carry the phrase “Mu-
hammad is the Apostle of God” are coins from Bishapur (Fars), ap-
parently issued in 66/685-686 and 67/686-687 by a governor for the
Zubayrids, so it may be that the Umayyads were inspired to empha-
size the role of the prophet by their rival ‘Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr,
known, as we have seen, for his stern piety. Whatever its inspiration,
‘Abd al-Malik and his entourage seem to have advanced this pro-
cess energetically and in several media. The Dome of the Rock in-
scriptions lay considerable emphasis on Muhammad’s position as
prophet; but more telling is the appearance on coins, from the time
of ‘Abd al-Malik onward, of the full “double shahada,” that is, the com-
bining of the phrase “There is no god but God” with the phrase
“Muhammad is the apostle of God” as a decisive marker of the
character of the issuing authority. The full double shahada becomes

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

increasingly frequent on later documents. The early Believers had
no doubt always recognized that their movement had been inaugu-
rated by someone named Muhammad, but as we have seen it is not
clear how ready the Jews and Christians of the Near East were to
embrace the Arabian Believers’ claim that Muhammad had been
truly a prophet. Emphasizing the importance to the Believers of
Muhammad’s status as God’s apostle was another way in which the
Umayyads and their advisers drew a clear line dividing Believers
from others— and drawing it unequivocally in such a way that
many Christians and Jews may have had difficulty remaining
within the Believers’ fold. This increasing emphasis on the signifi-
cance of Muhammad as prophet led, starting in the last quarter of
the first century AH/end of the seventh century c.E., to the cultiva-
tion and collection of sayings of the prophet (Arabic, hadith) as a
means of legitimating many practices and institutions within the
community.

Residual traces of this shift in terminology can be found in these
hadith collections. Some hadiths occur in two variants, one of which
appears more generally “Believerish” and the other more “Muslim.”
For example, the collections record the prophet as giving two variant
responses to a questioner who asks, “what is the best of works?” One
variant has him answering, “Belief in God, and jihad in the path of
God,” but the other has “Belief in God and His apostle, and jihad. . . .”
We can propose that, during the transmission of this hadith, the
second variant was generated by the addition of the apostle/prophet
to the first, in order to define “belief” in a way that included belief in
the prophet as an essential part, and not just belief in God.

Closely related to this emphasis on Muhammad’s prophecy or
apostleship is an emphasis on the Qur’an itself, the Arabic revela-
tion, which for Believers now assumes a status above those of the
earlier revelations, the tawrat (Torah) and the injil (Gospels). First
of all— although we know relatively little about it— cAbd al-Malik
ordered his governor in Iraq, Hajjaj, to prepare a re-edition of the

A letter from the Umayyad governor Qurra ibn Sharik. Early official letters,
such as this one, were written in large format and majestic script. This letter
fragment reveals Qurra adjudicating a dispute over property, referred to him
by his subordinate in one of the villages of the Egyptian countryside.

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Qur’an text that was provided for the first time with clear vowel and
diacritical markings to ensure proper reading and recitation of the
text. The fact that the amir al-muminin and his regime were distrib-
uting this “improved” version of the Qur an— of God’s word— to be
used in key communities of Believers (particularly in the garrison
towns) was one way in which 'Abd al-Malik could emphasize the fact
that the regime he headed was indeed that righteous “kingdom of
God” that the earliest Believers had aimed to establish. But it also
reaffirmed that the Believers’ regime he headed was dedicated to the
propagation and observance of God’s revealed word, the Qur’an.
The Dome of the Rock inscriptions are also instructive in this con-
text. Just as they emphasized Muhammad’s prophecy, they also em-
phasized the Qur’an, for the inscriptions contain extensive verbatim
passages from, or close paraphrases of, parts of the Qur’an— showing
that cAbd al-Malik and his circle were intent on emphasizing, in the
most splendid construction he undertook, the primacy of the Arabic
revelation as a source of religious legitimacy and guidance.

Similarly, cAbd al-Malik and his advisers instituted a thorough
overhaul of the iconography of the empire’s coinage, doing so in a
way that projected the legitimating quality of the Qur’an. The earli-
est coins issued by the Believers had been based on the coinage of the
Byzantine and Sasanian empires, whose dies they used, modified— if
at all— not by replacing their characteristic images, but by the addi-
tion of some typically “Believerish” slogan, such as “There is no god
but God.” £Abd al-Malik, however, scrapped the old coin styles entirely
and, after a short period of experimentation, began in 77/696-697
issuing coinage based on a radical new design. Unlike Byzantine and
Sasanian coins with their images of rulers and religious insignia, such
as the cross or a fire-temple, these new Umayyad coins were com-
pletely inscriptional and devoid of images of any kind. More impor-
tant still, the inscriptions on these new coins— other than mint names,
dates, and the name of the commander of the Believers or governor-
included the full “double shahada" and Quranic verses as well, often

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209

verses emphasizing God’s oneness and pointedly rejecting trinitarian
concepts. Frequently found, for example, was the following passage
from Quran 112:1-3: “God is one, the Lord of refuge, He neither
begets nor is begotten.” All of this was a way of proclaiming publicly
that true Believers were those who revered Muhammad as God’s
prophet and the Arabic Qur’an as God’s revelation.

Although it took some time to be implemented, the new reform
coinage established a relatively standardized iconography for the
empire, one that reflected consistently for the first time the Believers’
values. It also established a greater uniformity in coin values, which
presumably facilitated commerce. In a similar vein, cAbd al-Malik
standardized weights and measures of the empire, using as the new
norm the traditional weight values of the Hijaz— a choice that re-
flects the importance of Muhammad and the holy cities, Mecca and
Medina, in the minds of the Believers, and 'Abd al-Malik’s concern
to legitimate Umayyad rule by appealing to such sentiments. All
these measures can be seen as efforts by ‘Abd al-Malik (and by his
Umayyad successors) to reunify the empire after the divisions of the
civil wars. Moreover, they were attempting to bind the community
in ways that self-consciously enunciated the guiding principles and
beliefs of the Believers’ movement and so contributed to the goal of
establishing a righteous kingdom governed by God’s law. But in do-
ing so, they were clarifying or redefining the boundaries of the
movement itself.

Another interesting measure taken by 'Abd al-Malik was his adop-
tion, for a brief period, of the title khalifat allah, probably to be un-
derstood to mean “God’s deputy,” on a few transitional coin issues
that, while remotely based on modified Byzantine prototypes, con-
tained an image usually understood as a depiction of a standing
figure in Arabian dress. (The figure on these so-called “standing
caliph” coins has been interpreted variously as being either 'Abd al-
Malik or the prophet himself.) The significance of this term, khalifat
allah, has been much debated, but it seems likely that it was, once

Two coins of ‘Abd al-Malik. Abd al-Malik presided over a radical transfor-
mation in the iconography of Umayyad coinage. The upper image shows a
transitional issue, minted in Damascus in AH 75 (corresponding to 694-695
C.E.). It depicts, on the obverse, a standing, robed figure, girt with a sword,
usually understood to be the amir al-muminin himself, but thought by some
perhaps to represent the prophet Muhammad. The reverse is modeled on
Byzantine issues showing a cross mounted on steps, but the crossbar has been
left off to leave a post or staff on steps, thus negating the potent Christian
symbolism of the cross. The inscription on the obverse reads, “In the name
of God, there is no god but God alone; Muhammad is the apostle of God.”
The inscription on the reverse reads “In the name of God. This dinar was
minted in the year 75.” The lower coin shows a reform gold dinar, minted in
AH 77 (696-697 C.E.); the mint is not given. All representational imagery has
now been removed and replaced by verses from the Qur’an and religious
slogans. On the obverse, the central inscription reads “There is no God but
God alone, he has no associate.” The marginal inscription reads “Muham-
mad is the apostle of God; [He] sent him with guidance and the true
religion, to exalt it over every religion” (see Q. 9:33, 48:28, and 61:9). The
central inscription on the reverse reads “God is one; God is everlasting; he
begets not and is not begotten” (see Q. 112:1-3). The reverse margin reads,
“In the name of God, this dinar was minted in the year 77.”

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again, an attempt by ‘Abd al-Malik to legitimate his rule by referring
to the Quran— in this case, specifically to Qur’an 38:26, in which
God tells David, “O David! We did indeed make you a khalifa on
earth, to judge between men in truth, so do not follow your vain pas-
sions.” As the title amir al-muminin is not found in the Qur an, we
can speculate that ‘Abd al-Malik was adopting the Quranic term
khalifat allah in an effort to strengthen— or to establish— the percep-
tion that his rule had Quranic warrant. Perhaps ‘Abd al-Malik also
wanted to link himself with David, the founder of Jerusalem, be-
cause he was at the time constructing the Dome of the Rock there.
In any case, these coins are the first documentary attestation of
the application of the term khalifa (“caliph”); it eventually became
the standard term for the leaders of the Islamic state. Although some
have argued that the term khalifa was also applied to earlier amir
al-muminins, such as ‘Umar, ‘Uthman, and ‘Ali, there is no docu-
mentary support for such a view; although the number of such docu-
ments is limited, it is striking that of the roughly dozen documentary
attestations to the leader of the community of Believers dating be-
fore the time of ‘Abd al-Malik, every one refers to the leader as amir
al-muminin— not once is he called khalifa.

It seems most plausible, then, to link the first use of khalifa to ‘Abd
al-Malik and his determined program of emphasizing the status of the
Qur an, and its legitimating value, among the Believers. It seems that
this was part of ‘Abd al-Malik’s larger project aimed at restoring the
authority of Umayyad rule, the legitimacy of which had been seriously
eroded by the events (and the anti-Umayyad rhetoric) of the Second
Civil War. He and the later Umayyads strove to do so especially by
emphasizing the religious foundations of Umayyad rule, in particular,
their status as successors to Muhammad as heads of the community of
Believers and as rulers guided by the Quranic revelation Muhammad
had received. In doing so, they essentially defined “Islam” as we know
it today. Painful as they were, the two civil wars may thus have been
the crucial catalyst for this historic development.

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The Problem of the Trinity

The early Believers’ sense of themselves as constituting a move-
ment open to all who believed in God’s oneness and in righteous
living— what we have called the ecumenical character of the early
Believers’ movement — was probably always something that was
open to debate. But we have seen that Jews and Christians could
be, and some were, included within the Believers’ movement. We
have noted that early statements of faith (the “single shahada,”
“There is no god but God”), both inscriptional and literary, re-
flected this more inclusive outlook. Such testimony, and the persis-
tent evidence that Christians at least were actively involved in some
aspects of the Believers’ community well into Umayyad times, as
we have seen in previous chapters, shows that this confessionally
open quality was a reality. The fact that many of the Christians
encountered by the first Arabian Believers in the Near East were
monophysites, whose formulations of trinitarian doctrine empha-
sized Christ’s single nature, or Nestorians, who emphasized Christ’s
human nature and played down his divinity, may have meant that
they aroused less immediate opposition from the Believers. It has
been suggested that the Umayyads, ruling in and from Syria, may
have been especially mindful of the concerns of Christians, some
of whom were important supporters of the regime (including the
Christians of the powerful Kalb tribe, who were intermarried with
Mu'awiya’s family and contributed troops to the Umayyad army).
This may explain why the Believers in Syria appear to have placed
considerable emphasis on the role of Jesus, whose “second coming”
shows up in Islamic eschatological traditions dating to the Umayyad
period. (Later, after the Umayyads had been overthrown and the
Abbasids had moved the center of the empire to Iraq, this early
emphasis on Jesus was abandoned by developing Islamic tradition,
because Jews and Zoroastrians were more prominent and numer-
ous in Iraq than Christians.)

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But for those Believers who were inclined to be sticklers on the
question of God’s oneness, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity must
always have been a problem. Indeed, we find even in the Qur’an a
few passages in which the idea of the Trinity is decisively rejected:
“They disbelieve who say: ‘God is the third of three,’ for there is no
god but the one God . . [Q. 5:76]; “God is one, God is the Lord of

refuge; He begets not, nor is He begotten . . .” [Q. 112:1-3].

The earliest surviving evidence (other than the Qur’an itself) that
the ruling circles of the Believers’ movement— the amir al-muminin
and his key advisers— were inclined to turn against these Christian
doctrines (the Trinity, Jesus as God’s son, the divinity and resurrec-
tion of Jesus), is found on some early coins that the Believers issued
in Syria, based on modified Byzantine coin types. The Byzantine
coin issue that had shown a cross on steps (Christian symbol of Jesus’
divine nature and resurrection) was modified to show only a vertical
staff on steps— the crossbar is pointedly removed, and although the
dating of these issues is debated, they appear to have been issued in
the early years of ‘Abd al-Malik’s reign, if not earlier (possibly under
Mu'awiya). More decisive evidence of an anti-trinitarian attitude
among the ruling elite comes with 'Abd al-Malik’s construction of
the Dome of the Rock beginning in 72/692. The inscriptions in the
Dome of the Rock include a selection of Qur’anic verses chosen
specifically, it seems, to emphasize the unacceptability of the trini-
tarian idea and to reinforce the idea of God’s indivisible unity. (See
“Inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem” in Appendix B.)
As the Dome of the Rock was built on orders of the commander of
the Believers in a prominent location and in sumptuous style, there
can be little doubt that ‘Abd al-Malik and his advisers wished to con-
vey a powerful and unmistakable message. It seems fair to assume
from this that ‘Abd al-Malik and the Umayyad ruling elite were by
this time, at the latest, reconsidering the status of Christians within
the community of Believers, even though many Christians contin-
ued to serve the dynasty until its fall in 132/750. Or, to put it more

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precisely, the elite seems to have been engaged in rethinking their
own identity as Believers and “drawing the line” between them-
selves and those who embraced any hint of trinitarian doctrines.

Elaboration of Islamic Cultic Practices

Yet another dimension of the process by which Islam coalesced from
the early Believers’ movement involved certain aspects of religious
ritual; for even more than theological differences, it is differences in
cultic practice that set one religious community apart from others.
As we have seen, there is evidence that the early Believers from Ara-
bia, as a religious movement, participated in the prayer practices of
some of the Christian (and Jewish?) communities they encountered
in Syria, Iraq, and possibly elsewhere— reports of the Believers “di-
viding” churches with Christians, and of an east-facing qibla or
direction of prayer, were specifically noted. The evidence of the
Cathisma Church, with its east-facing apse and south-facing mihrab
or prayer niche added in the final phase of construction, presumably
reflects architecturally the very moment when the Qur anic Believ-
ers began to redefine themselves as “Muslims,” distinct from their
erstwhile Christian co-Believers. It is possible that the vague tradi-
tional reports about Muhammad himself changing the direction of
prayer during his early years in Medina are a retouched, vestigial
memory of this change, projected back to the time of the prophet to
make it acceptable to later generations.

The similarity between some features of the Muslim Friday prayer
service and certain aspects of both Christian and Jewish prayer ritu-
als, discussed by various scholars, also suggests an initial stage in the
development of Muslim ritual when the Believers’ movement actu-
ally incorporated Christian or Jewish Believers. The complete ab-
sence in the Qur’an of any mention of the distinctive components of
the Muslim Friday prayer— notably the khutba or sermon by the

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215

prayer leader, the minbar or pulpit from which it is delivered, or ref-
erences to Friday prayer being in any way special— raise the question
of whether the Friday prayer ritual existed at all before Umayyad
times and the coalescence of the Umayyad state.

It is clear, however, that the Believers’ basic ritual practices— ritual
prayer, fasting during the month of Ramadan, and pilgrimage— go
back to Muhammad’s time and the very beginnings of the Believers’
movement, because they are mentioned, if not always fully described,
in the Quran text. But there is no doubt that these and other ritual
practices were not at first so rigidly defined as they later became, so it
seems likely that some of these rituals evolved under the influence of
the practices of Jewish or Christian Believers of the Fertile Crescent
(or even of Arabia in Muhammad’s day). The number of prayers to
be performed daily, for example, is not explicitly established by the
Qur’an; later Muslim tradition eventually settled on five prayers per
day as the requirement, but the question was clearly the subject of
considerable discussion before this consensus was reached. The
many sayings attributed to the prophet contained in the vast collec-
tions of hadith, which coalesced in the Muslim community in the
second century AH/eighth century C.E.and third century AH/ninth
century c.e., contains the residue of this and other debates in the
community over just how various rituals were to be performed, re-
vealing how numerous features of these rituals remained in flux for
some time, as different practices or points of view were advanced by
different hadiths.

The pilgrimage ritual or hajj also seems to have evolved during
the early community’s history. Reports of ‘Abd al-Malik, as amir
al-muminin , leading the hajj during his rule imply that details of the
hajj ritual were still being settled during his day, and he is reported
to have ordered a complete “restoration” of the Ka'ba, to purge it of
additions made by ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr. Similarly, ‘Abd al-Malik’s
predecessor, the amir al-muminin Mu‘awiya (ruled 41-60/661-680),
was the moving spirit behind the construction of the first maqsura or

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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

screen in the prayer hall to separate himself from the ranks of pray-
ing Believers (a construction perhaps somewhat similar in function
to the iconostasis or icon screen that sheltered Christian officiants
from their congregations in church).

The process of defining what became Muslim rituals thus lasted
for several— perhaps many— decades after the death of Muhammad.

Elaboration of the Islamic Origins Story

Another dimension of this transformation of the Believers’ move-
ment into Islam involved the construction of an origins story narrat-
ing the foundational events in the life of the community of Believ-
ers/Muslims. Many people in the community contributed to the
process of remembering, collecting, and reworking stories of what
had happened in the community in the days of Muhammad and
during the conquests and civil wars; but it is clear that the Umayyad
rulers, in particular, played a major role in encouraging this activity.
The Umayyads invited knowledgeable people to court and supported
them with patronage— a few of the foremost examples being Ibn
Shihab al-Zuhri and ‘Urwa ibn al-Zubayr, both of whom contributed
significantly to drawing up the first extant biography of Muhammad
and his prophetic career.

The Islamic origins story focused on several main themes and is-
sues, which provided a detailed justification of the community’s exis-
tence; and this story forms, to this day, one of the main sources of
information on which historians must draw to describe the events of
Islam's origins. Several themes clustered around the life of Muham-
mad; their overarching goal was to demonstrate Muhammad’s pro-
phetic status, in keeping with the model of the prophets who had
come before him, and to describe the manner in which he received
the Quranic revelation. Other themes are concerned especially
with showing how Muhammad founded the original community of
Believers and how that community continued to exist and to cling to

The Emergence of Islam

217

its foundational values over the years and decades after the prophet’s
death. Still other themes provided a justification for the Believers’/
Muslims’ hegemony over the vast areas and populations they ruled,
framed by the twin propositions that the Believers’ military victories
over the Byzantines and Sasanians were signs of God’s favor and that
their rule was dedicated to the realization of God’s law on Earth.

The goal of the origins narratives, as they coalesced, was thus to
legitimate the community of Believers in general terms by affirming
the details of how the community began for all Believers— especially
those born too late to have known the prophet or to have wit-
nessed the early days of the community’s expansion. But it is also
clear that this exercise in legitimation was directed not only inward,
but also outward, at non-Believers/non-Muslims. The stories about
Muhammad’s prophecy made clear that one could not be a Believer
(or Muslim) without recognizing Muhammad as one’s prophet, and
so it helped draw that line that came to distinguish Muslims from
Christians and Jews, whose reservations about Muhammad’s proph-
ecy we have already noted. Similarly, the extensive conquest narra-
tives, while emphasizing without fail the conquerors’ religious moti-
vations, consistently present them as Muslims— not as Believers or
as muhajirun, the two terms that we know from Qur’anic and non-
Islamic documentary evidence were the ones the conquerors had
actually used to refer to themselves in the early years of the move-
ment. This emphasis on the Muslim identity in the conquest narra-
tives seems likely to be part of the process by which the Believers’
movement excluded Christians and Jews and redefined itself as
applying only to Believers following Qur’anic law— or as we would
say, to Muslims.

The Coalescence of an “Arab” Political Identity

Another feature of the transformation of the Believers’ movement
into Islam was the articulation, for the first time, of a consciously

218

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

“Arab” political identity— that is, a collective identity that was not
merely cultural, but that expressed itself loosely in the form of politi-
cal claims. As a political identity, membership in this group gave one
special political privileges, in particular, the right to be considered
part of the ruling caste of the new Umayyad/Muslim empire.

It has sometimes been argued that the rise of Islam— what we pre-
fer to understand as the first appearance and expansion of the Believ-
ers’ movement— was essentially an “Arab” movement. The implica-
tion of such a view is that an “Arab” political identity existed on the
eve of Muhammad’s preaching and that it was the powerful desire to
realize this latent collective identity as “Arabs” in political form that
really generated the Believers’ expansion and the creation of their
empire. This view is, however, anachronistic and profoundly mis-
leading. It usually represents the facile interpolation back into the
seventh century C.E. of modern concepts of Arab nationalism that
only came into existence in the late nineteenth century.

The Arabic-speaking peoples of Arabia and adjacent areas in the
early seventh century (and, indeed, even in antiquity), were, to be
sure, well aware of the fact that they spoke mutually intelligible forms
of a common language; and there existed a common poetic lan-
guage, the ‘arabiyya, representing a literary ideal that was different
from any particular spoken dialect. But this is to speak only of a
vague linguistic, and perhaps cultural, identity, not of a political one
as “Arabs.” There is almost no evidence for the existence of a collec-
tive “Arab” political identity before the Believers created their em-
pire. Moreover, the “Arab national” or “nativist” interpretation of the
beginnings of the Believers’ movement and Islam fails to take into
account the Qur’an’s deafening silence on the concept of an “Arab”
political identity. In a few passages, the Qur’an refers to itself as an
“Arabic Qur’an,” but this is a linguistic statement and nothing more.
Nowhere does the Qur’an advance, or even hint at, any kind of col-
lective identity other than that of the Believers— an identity squarely
based in faith and righteous action, not in ethnic or “national” or

The Emergence of Islam

219

even cultural affiliation. Moreover, the few times the Quran men-
tions the a ‘rab— to be understood as nomads— it is with pejorative
overtones; of “Arabs” ( ‘arab •) it speaks not at all.

The Arabic-speaking populations of the Near East were at this
time divided into different tribes, and it was to their individual tribes
that these people owed their primary identity— if it was not to their
faith. In other words, we can no more speak of an “Arab” political
identity at that time than we might speak today of Englishmen,
Irishmen, Scots, Americans, Australians, Canadians, New Zealand-
ers, Jamaicans, and so on, as having a common “Anglo” identity with
significant political (rather than merely cultural) content. To argue
that the Believers’ movement was at heart a “national” or “nativist”
or “Arab” movement is particularly misleading because it obscures
the most important characteristic of the Believers’ movement, visible
in the Qur’an and in the few early documents we have— its nature as
a movement rooted in religious faith— and substitutes for it a social
impetus rooted in a presumed collective identity (as “Arabs”) for which
there is no credible evidence, only sketchy and unsupported extrapo-
lation from present conditions.

Although there is thus no evidence that an “Arab” identity con-
tributed to the early Believers’ movement, it seems clear that with
the passage of time the success of the Believers’ movement in estab-
lishing an empire helped create an embryonic Arab political identity
in the minds of the ruling elite. In other words, an Arab identity was
an unintended result of the Believers’ movement, not its cause. The
historical accident that the movement began in Arabia meant that
the ruling circles were dominated almost exclusively by Arabians
(mostly, indeed, Hijazis) whose native language was Arabic. As the
Believers spread into vast new areas and established their hegemony
there— in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and further afield— the leading
cadres and the bulk of their soldiers, all Arabic-speaking and mostly
from Arabia, could hardly have failed to notice that most of their
subjects were not Arabic-speaking. The association of Arabic with

220

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

political dominance thus may have generated a sense among Arabic
speakers that the empire was an “Arab kingdom” and that all Arabic
speakers were politically kin because of their shared dominant status
in the new empire. But this “Arab” political identity remained weak
(until the nineteenth century) and never seriously challenged the
basic tribal identity of most Arabians.

This sense of an “Arab” identity that one imagines growing
particularly among the upper echelons of the ruling elite is also ex-
pressed in the nascent historiographical tradition. The majority of
the voluminous conquest narratives, following what we may call
“reformed” vocabulary, speak in terms of Muslims conquering non-
Muslims (rather than Believers and unbelievers); but there are some
reports in which the confrontations are described as being between
the “Arabs" on the one hand and the ‘ajam (non-Arabic speakers), or
Byzantines or Persians, on the other. This kind of vocabulary seems
likely to reflect the identity categories of the age following this shift
in conceptualizations, when the conquest narratives were compiled,
rather than those of the conquest era itself.

Not only the experience of empire, but also the presence of the
Arabic Qur’an, provided an impetus for the crystallization of this
nascent “Arab” identity in the Umayyad period. As the Believers’
movement gradually evolved into Islam, there developed, as we have
seen, an increased emphasis on Quranic law as the decisive deter-
minant of one’s status as a Muslim. This increased emphasis on the
Arabic Qur’an, however, dovetailed well with the dawning aware-
ness of an “Arab” political identity among a ruling elite that now pre-
ferred to identify itself as Muslims, rather than as Believers.

Official vs. Popular Change

The broad transformation just sketched, by which Islam crystallized
out of the Believers’ movement, was partly the result of intentional

The Emergence of Mam

221

decisions made by the ruling Umayyad dynasty under cAbd al-Malik
and his successors and partly the result of changes of perspective
among the rank and file of Believers themselves— both the Qur’an-
oriented Believers of Arabian origin and those Jews and Christians
who had been part of the early Believers’ movement. The emer-
gence of Islam and the demise of the original organizing concep-
tions of the Believers’ movement thus combined changes that were
quite sudden and radical with others that took shape only gradu-
ally and took decades, sometimes as much as a century, to reach
completion. Official measures such as ‘Abd al-Malik’s coinage reform,
with its emphasis on Qur’anic legitimation, or the building of the
Dome of the Rock, with both its emphatic use of the “double sha-
hada” and its strongly anti-trinitarian inscriptional message, can be
dated quite precisely to within a few years. On the other hand, the
more widespread and growing perception among Christian, Jewish,
and Quranic Believers that perhaps only the latter were really part
of the movement seems to have taken hold much more gradually.
Moreover, the relationship between the two kinds of change is not
obvious. Did the specific policy initiatives of the Umayyads (such as
their attack on the Trinity) blaze the way for the reorientation of
popular thinking? Or was the policy itself an official expression of
changes in popular attitudes that were already underway? We can-
not be sure, but we can say that a number of key policy initiatives
that clearly conform to an intellectual shift from a more ecumenical
Believers’ movement to a more closely defined confessional identity
as Muslims seems to cluster in the 70s/690s, in the time of ‘Abd
al-Malik. On the other hand, we cannot say that the shift from Be-
lievers’ movement to Islam is complete at this time, because we con-
tinue to find evidence of close collaboration of some Christians (and
perhaps some Jews) with the Muslims for many years thereafter. Wis-
dom sayings attributed to the Umayyad amir al-muminin ‘Umar (II)
ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, who reigned between 99-101/717-720 and was re-
nowned for his piety, suggest that he held Christian monks and holy

Ill

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

men in high esteem, and he died while visiting the famous mon-
astery of St. Simeon, in the hills near Aleppo, where his tomb can
still be seen. The close association of Christian advisers with the
later Umayyad caliphs— John of Damascus’s service to Hisham is the
best-known example— may also be a vestige of an earlier stage in
which there was a fuller place in the leadership of the Believers’
movement for righteous Christians and Jews. The continuing con-
struction, or at least reconstruction, of Christian churches in geo-
graphical Syria into the late second century AH/eighth century c.E.,
datable by their excavated mosaic floors, also suggests that even for
some time after the Believers’ movement had given way to a self-
consciously Muslim regime, that regime was not yet always harshly
confessional in its policies.

There can be little doubt, however, that by the final years of the
first century AH/seventh century c.E. and the beginning of the sec-
ond century AH/eighth century C.E., the more open, “Believerish”
character of the movement had begun to give way definitively to a
firmer identity for those in the movement as belonging to a new reli-
gious confession, Islam. We can measure this by considering Chris-
tian religious polemics of the seventh and eighth centuries. Those
written during the first century AH/seventh century C.E. are preoc-
cupied, as earlier polemics had been, with attacking the errors of
Judaism or of rival (“heretical”) forms of Christianity— Nestorianism,
monophysitism, or the Byzantine official doctrine. There are, as yet,
no attacks on Islam in these polemics, even though a few of them
mention in passing the presence of an amir or another representa-
tive of the mhaggraye at the disputation the text describes. These
seventh-century Christian polemicists apparently did not yet recog-
nize the Believers as constituting a separate religious creed that re-
quired theological refutation. Only in the very last years of the first
century AH/seventh century c.E. and in the second century AH/
eighth century C.E. do we begin to find Christian polemics that offer
arguments attempting to refute Islam’s main theological positions—

The Emergence of Islam

223

The Tomb of the amir al-muminin ‘Umar II. This shrine is located just
beside the cathedral and monastery complex of St. Simeon, where
according to some traditions 'Umar is said to have died in 101/720.

evidence that by this time someone was presenting Islam in a way
that depicted it as a creed distinct from Christianity. Yet the sense
that the Believers’ movement that becomes Islam was not entirely at
odds with Christianity, at least, seems to survive in some ways even
into the mid-eighth century, for it is then that John of Damascus—
who, as a high administrator for the Umayyads, surely knew whereof
he spoke— wrote his famous treatise on “The Heresy of the Ishmael-
ites.” In other words, he could still perceive nascent Islam as a form
of Christian heresy, rather than as a fully independent religion.

It has long been recognized that Islam in the fully developed form
we can see in the second and third centuries AH/eighth and ninth
centuries C.E. was the result of a process of sustained development.
Many have discussed the development of the institutions of the first

224

MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS

Islamic state, which began in Arabia with only rudimentary arrange-
ments but within a century had acquired not only a standing army
but also robust political, judicial, and administrative institutions.
Others have discussed the development and refinement of the
theological doctrines of Islam, building on the basic doctrines found
in the Qur’an, a process that seems to get underway in earnest only
in the late Umayyad period (first half of the second century
AH/eighth century c.E.). These two processes of development, how-
ever, do not tell the full story. Just as important— indeed, perhaps
more important— was a third process, by which Islam, as a distinct
religious confession centered on reverence for the Qur’an as the lat-
est revelation of God’s eternal word and recognition of Muhammad
as the final prophet and messenger of God’s word, emerged from the
more loosely defined Believers’ movement inaugurated by Muham-
mad. It was this process, which we have attempted to trace in the
preceding pages, that first truly established the lineaments of Islam.

APPENDIXES

NOTES AND GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
GLOSSARY

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
INDEX

Appendix A:

The umma Document

A he “umma document,” sometimes also called the “Constitution
of Medina,” the “sahifa document,” or the “surma jami‘a,” is a group
of connected documents or treaty clauses apparently concluded be-
tween the prophet Muhammad and the people of Yathrib. The origi-
nal documents are now lost, but the text is preserved, with mostly
minor variations, in two early Islamic literary texts: the Sira (a biog-
raphy of the prophet) of Muhammad ibn Ishaq (died ca. 150/767),
and the Kitab al-amwal (a book on property) of Abu ‘Ubayd al-Qasim
ibn Sallam (died 224/838). As with all literary texts compiled a cen-
tury or more after the time of Muhammad, one can question the
authenticity of this text; but the consensus of scholars, even those
who are generally skeptical about the reliability of such late texts, is
that the umma document is probably a fairly accurate transcription
of an actual early document. This is because, both in form and con-
tent, it seems archaic and because it presents things in ways that do
not conform to later idealizing views; hence it seems unlikely that it
is a later invention.

The translation here follows mainly the text of Ibn Ishaq. I have
relied heavily on earlier translations and analysis made by Alfred
Guillaume, R. B. Serjeant, and Michael Lecker:

228

Appendix A

Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1955), 231-233.

R. B. Serjeant, “The “Sunnah Jami'ah,” Pacts with the Yathrib Jews, and the
“Tahrim” of Yathrib: Analysis an Translation of the Documents Com-
prised in the So-Called ‘Constitution of Medina,’” Bulletin of the School
of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 41 (1978): 1-42.
Michael Lecker, The “Constitution of Medina”: Muhammad’s First Legal
Document (Princeton, NJ: Darwin, 2004).

The pious phrases that follow the names of God and Muhammad in
most versions of the text have been omitted here.

The Text

This is a document from Muhammad the prophet (al-nabi), between the
Believers and the Muslims of Quraysh and Yathrib and those who follow them
and attach themselves to them and struggle alongside them. Verily they are one
community (umma) to the exclusion of [other] people.

The muhajirun from Quraysh [remain] in charge of their own affairs, arranging
matters of blood-money among themselves, and ransoming their captives
following custom and what is equitable among the Believers.

Banu ‘Awf [remain] in charge of their own affairs, arranging matters of their
blood-money among themselves as before; every section of them ransoming their
captives following custom and what is equitable among the Believers.

Banu al-Harith [remain] in charge of their own affairs, arranging matters of
their blood-money among themselves as before; every section of them ransoming
their captives following custom and what is equitable among the Believers.

Banu Saida [remain] in charge of their own affairs, . . .

Banu jusham [remain] in charge of their own affairs, . . .

Banu al-Najjar [remain] in charge of their own affairs, . . .

Appendix A

229

Banu cAmr ibn ’Awf [remain] in charge of their own affairs, . . .

Banu al-Nabit [remain] in charge of their own affairs, . . .

Banu al-Aws [remain] in charge of their own affairs, . . .

The Believers shall not fail to give [aid] to a debtor [or: pauper] among them in
matters of ransom or blood-money, as is customary.

A Believer shall not make an alliance with the client (mawla) of [another]
Believer to [the latter’s] detriment [or: excluding him].

The God-fearing Believers are against anyone among them who acts
outrageously or [who] practices extortion or [spreads] treachery or enmity or
dissension among the Believers. Verily their hands shall be united against him,
even if he is the son of one of them.

A Believer shall not kill [another] Believer for the sake of an unbeliever (kafir),
nor shall he assist an unbeliever against a Believer.

God’s protection is one; the lowest of them [i.e., of the Believers] may grant
protection [to outsiders] that is binding upon all of them.

The Believers are allies (mawali) one to another, to the exclusion of other people.

Whoever follows us among the jews shall have assistance and equitable treatment;
they shall not be oppressed, nor shall [any of us] gang up against them.

The peace of the Believers is indivisible. No Believer shall make a [separate] peace
to the exclusion of [that is, without consulting?] [another] Believer in fighting in
the path of God, except on the basis of equity and justice among them.

All raiding parties that set out on raiding with us shall follow one after another
[that is, take turns?].

The Believers are to take vengeance for one another’s blood shed in the path of God.

The God-fearing Believers are in accord with the best and truest of this
[agreement?].

230

Appendix A

No polytheist (mushrik) shall grant protection to property belonging to
Quraysh, nor to a person; nor shall he come between it/him against a Believer.

Whoever kills a Believer without good reason, [the murder being substantiated] on
the basis of sound evidence, shall be slain in retaliation, unless the next of kin [of
the slain] is satisfied [with blood-money]. All the Believers shall be against him;
anything other than standing [united] against him shall not be allowed to them.

It is not permissible for the Believer who affirms what it is this treaty (sahifa),
and believes in God and the Last Day, to aid a sinner [murderer?] or to give him
refuge. Whosoever aids him or gives him refuge shall have upon him the curse of
God and His wrath on the Day of Resurrection; and neither repentance nor
ransom will be accepted from him.

Whatever matters you disagree on should be referred to God and to Muhammad
[that is, for resolution].

The lews shall pay [their] share with the Believers, as long as they are engaged
in warfare [that is, alongside one another].

The Jews ofBanu ‘Awf are a community [umma] with the Believers; the lews
have their religion/law (din) and the Muslims have their religion/law, their
clients (mawali), and their persons, except that anyone who behaves unjustly
and acts treacherously [or: acts sinfully] destroys only himself and his kinsmen.

The ]ews ofBanu l-Najjar have the same [rights and obligations] as the lews of
Banu ‘Awf.

The lews of Banu l-Harith have the same. . . .

The Jews ofBanu Sa’ida have the same. . . .

The Jews ofBanu Jusham have the same. . . .

The Jews ofBanu l-Aws have the same. . . .

The Jews of Banu ThaTaba have the same [rights and obligations] as the Jews of
Banu ‘Awf, except that anyone who behaves unjustly and acts treacherously [or:
acts sinfully] destroys only himself and his kinsmen.

Appendix A

231

jafna are a section of the Tha’laba and are [treated] like them.

The Banu l-Shutayba have the same [rights and obligations] as the Jews of Banu
'Awf.

The righteous person guards against treachery.

The clients (mawali) of Tha’laba are [to be considered] just like them.

The close associates of the jews are as themselves.

No one of them may go out [from Yathrib? or from the umma? or to war?],
except with the permission of Muhammad.

One shall not be prevented from taking revenge for a wound.

Whoever assassinates [someone], assassinates himself and his kinsmen, unless
[the victim] be someone who acted wrongfully, for God supports the more
righteous [party] in this (?).

The jews owe their [share of] expenses, and the Muslims owe their [share of]
expenses.

Between them is [mutual] assistance against whosoever declares war against the
people of this treaty (sahifa).

Between them is sincere advice and counsel.

The righteous person guards against treachery.

A man shall not betray his ally, and assistance belongs to the person wronged.

The center ( jawf) of Yathrib is sacrosanct (or: a sacred area) for the people of
this treaty (sahifa).

The protected person ( jar) is like one’s self, neither being harmed nor acting
treacherously.

A woman shall not be granted protection except with the permission of her
family.

232

Appendix A

Whatever offense or disagreement there may be among the people of this treaty
(sahifa), from which trouble may arise, should be referred to God and to
Muhammad.

God supports whatever is most righteous and upright in this treaty.

No protection shall be extended to Quraysh, nor to anyone who assists them.

Between them [ that is, the parties to the treaty } is [mutual] assistance against
anyone who attacks Yathrib.

When they are called to conclude and observe a truce (sulh), they will conclude
and observe it; and when they call [others] for the same, the Believers are
obligated to grant them that, except whoever goes to war over religion/law (din).

All persons are responsible for their share of their side that is opposite them [?).

The Jews of al-’Aws, their clients (mawali) and themselves, are on the same basis
as the people of this treaty (sahifa), with sincere loyalty from the people of this
treaty.

The righteous person guards against treachery.

Whoever acquires [something, that is, for good or evil?] acquires it only for himself.

God supports the truest and most righteous of what is in this treaty.

This document does not protect anyone who acts unjustly or treacherously.

Whoever goes out is safe, and whoever remains in place is safe in the city [or: in
Medina], except whoever acts unjustly or treacherously.

God is the protector of whoever is upright and righteous, and Muhammad is the
apostle (rasul) of God.

The most worthy of those in this treaty (sahifa) are the sincerely righteous.

Appendix B:

Inscriptions in the Dome
of the Rock, Jerusalem

T

x he inscriptions on the inner mosaics of the Dome of the Rock,
constructed by order of the amir al-muminin ‘Abd al-Malik, consti-
tute the longest extant group of official inscriptions by the Believers
from the first century AH. It is noteworthy for its inclusion of nu-
merous quotations of, or close paraphrases of, selected verses of the
Qur’an. The content is quite repetitive but conveys a strong theologi-
cal message. The inscription itself is dated to the year 72/691, which
must be close to the time the building was completed, because the
decorations would be the last element in its construction. During
the ninth century c.E., the caliph al-Ma’mun (ruled 198—218/813—
833) ordered the inscription on the outer face of the arcade to be
emended, replacing the name of ‘Abd al-Malik with his own. How-
ever, he neglected to change the date of the inscription, so the attri-
bution of the inscription and building to 'Abd al-Malik is certain.
The section replaced is indicated in the translation below by under-
lining. The inscription generally lacks any punctuation, but sections
on the inner face of the arcade are separated by medallions; in the
translation below the location of each medallion is marked by an
asterisk (*).

234

Appendix B

The translation is based on the careful transcription of the “Kufic”
style script prepared by Christel Kessler in 1967 (Christel Kessler,
‘“Abd al-Malik s Inscription in the Dome of the Rock: A Reconsid-
eration,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1970): 2-14).

The Inscriptions

[A. Inner face of octagonal arcade]

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. There is no god except
God, alone; He has no partner. Sovereignty belongs to Him, and praise belongs
to Him. He brings to life, and He takes life away, and He is powerful over every
thing [see Q. 44:1 and Q. 42:2], Muhammad is God’s servant and His apostle
(rasul). Verily, God and His angels bless the prophet (nabi). O you who believe,
bless him and offer greetings. May God bless him, and may peace and God’s
mercy be upon him. O people of the book, do not exaggerate in your religion
(din), and speak of God only the truth. The Messiah Jesus son of Mary was
only the apostle (rasul) of God and His word, which He cast unto Mary, and a
spirit from Him. So believe in God and His apostles and do not say “three."
Desist! [It is] better for you. God is one deity only, He is above having a son.
Whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth is His, and God is the
best advocate [see Q. 4:171], The Messiah would never disdain to be God’s
servant, nor would the closest angels; whoever disdains His service /worship and
is arrogant. He will gather them all to Himself [that is, on the Day of
Judgment ; see Q. 4:172], O God, bless Y our apostle (rasul) and Your servant
Jesus son of Mary; may peace be upon him on the day he was born, and the
day he will die, and the day he will be resurrected alive [see Q. 19:15]. Thus is
Jesus son of Mary, a statement of the truth that they doubt. It was not for God
to take a son, glory be to Him. When He decrees a matter. He only says “be!"
and it is. God is my lord (rabb) and your lord, so serve/worship Him; that is the
straight path [see Q. 19:34-36], God bears witness that there is no deity except
Him, and the angels and men of knowledge [also bear witness], ordaining
[matters] in justice (qist); there is no deity except Him, the Mighty, the Wise
[see Q. 3:18]. Verily religion/law (din) with God is Islam. Those who received
the book only differed after knowledge had come to them, due to envy among

Appendix B

235

them. Whoever denies the signs (ayat) of God— God is swift of reckoning
[seeQ. 3.19],

[B. Outer face of octagonal arcade]

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful: There is no deity except
God alone. He has no partner. Say: He, God, is one, God the eternal; He did
not beget nor was He begotten, and there is no equal to Him [see Q. 112).
Muhammad is the apostle (rasul) of God. May God bless him.'* In the name of
God, the Compassionate, the Merciful: there is no deity except God, alone; He
has no partner. Muhammad is the apostle (rasul) of God. Verily God and His
angels bless the prophet (al-nabi). O you who believe, bless him and offer
greetings [see Q. 33:56].* In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful:
There is no deity except God, alone. Praise be to God, who did not take a son,
and who has no partner in sovereignty (al-mulk), and who has no helper from
the mundane (wali min al-dhull). So magnify Him greatly [see Q. 17:111 ].
Muhammad is the apostle (rasul) of God; may God and His angels and His
messengers (rusul) bless him; peace upon him, and the blessings of God.* In the
name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful: there is no deity except God,
alone, He has no partner. Sovereignty belongs to Him, and praise belongs to
Him. He brings to life, and He takes life away, and He is powerful over every
thing [see Q. 44:1 and Q. 42:2], Muhammad is the apostle (rasul) of God, may
God bless him and accept his intercession on the day of resurrection on behalf of
his community (umma).* In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful:
There is no deity except God, alone, He has no partner. Muhammad is the
apostle (rasul) of God, may God bless him* The servant of God ’Abd Allah the
imam al-Ma’mun. amir al-mu’minin, built this dome in the year two and
seventy; may God accept it from him and be pleased with him. Amen, Lord of
the worlds, praise belongs to God.*

Notes and Guide to
Further Reading

The following pages provide readers with some idea of where to go for fur-
ther information on topics covered in this book. On occasion, they also
provide supporting documentation, where it exists, for specialists and inter-
ested general readers alike. Matters are arranged more or less in the se-
quence in which they occur in each chapter.

The following abbreviations are used in the notes:

BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Univer-
sity of London.

CCJ Michael Maas, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of
Justinian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Donner, “Believers to Muslims” Fred M. Donner, "From Believers to
Muslims: Confessional Self-identity in the Early Islamic Commu-
nity,” Al-Abhath 50-51 (2002-2003): 9-53.

Donner, Conquests Fred M. Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).

Donner, Narratives Fred M. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The
Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Princeton, NJ: Darwin
Press, 1998).

El (2) Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E. }. Brill, 1960-2002).
Cited by the title of the article.

238

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

Guillaume, Life Alfred Guillaume, trans., The Life of Muhammad
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955).

Hoyland, Seeing Islam Robert Hoyland, Seeing Islam As Others Saw It.
A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian
Writings on Early Islam (Princeton, N): Darwin Press, 1997).

IJMES International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies

JSAI Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam

Tab. Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Tarikh, ed. Michael Jan de Goeje
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1879-1901). English translation The History of
al-Tabari, 38 vols. (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1985-continuing). References are provided only to the Arabic text of
the de Goeje edition; the de Goeje paginations are noted in the
margins of the translation, so references can be traced in either
version.

Preface

The quote is from Ernest Renan, ‘‘Mahomet and the Origins of Islamism,”
in his Studies of Religious History (London: Heinemann, 1893), 187.
(French original Etudes d'histoire religieuse [Paris: M. Levy, 1857].)

1. The Near East on the Eve of Islam

Fcr a general orientation into the Late Antique world, one can best begin
with Peter Brown’s classic The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150-750 (Lon-
don: Thames & Hudson, 1971), a short, brilliant overview. For greater de-
tail, consult G. Bowersock, P. Brown, and O. Grabar, eds., Late Antiquity: A
Guide to the Postclassical World (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Har-
vard University Press, 1999), whose long essays and many shorter entries
offer good orientations on most aspects of late antique history and life, in-
cluding Byzantium, the early medieval West, the Sasanian Empire, and
early Islam. Stephen Mitchell, A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD
286-641: The Transformation of the Ancient World (Oxford: Blackwell,
2007), covers both the eastern and western parts of the empire. Kevin

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

239

Butcher, Roman Syria and the Near East (London: British Museum Press,
2003), focuses on the East.

On the Byzantine Empire: Averil Cameron, The Mediterranean World in
Late Antiquity, AD 395-600 (London: Routledge, 1993), integrates recent
work on social and economic history, as well as the more traditional foci of
state and church institutions. CCJ includes a number of very helpful chap-
ters. F. M. Donner, “The Background of Islam,” CCJ, 510-533, offers a
slightly more detailed discussion of some of the points covered here.

On the “last Byzantine emperor” idea, see Paul J. Alexander, The Byz-
antine Apocalyptic Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985),
151-184; idem, “Byzantium and the Migration of Literary Works and Mo-
tifs: The Legend of the Last Roman Emperor,” Medievalia et Humanistica
n.s. 2 (1971): 47-68.

On the socioeconomic structure of the Byzantine world, see Cameron,
Mediterranean World, chap. 4; Mitchell, History of the Roman Empire, chap.
10; and John F. Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transforma-
tion of a Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), especially
chaps. 3, 4, and 10. On the middle classes, see Linda Jones Hall, “The Case
of Late Antique Berytus: Urban Wealth and Rural Sustenance— A Different
Economic Dynamic,” in Thomas S. Burns and John W. Eadie, eds., Urban
Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity (East Lansing, MI: Michigan
State University Press, 2001), 63-76. On the spread of ascetic Christianity
and an egalitarian outlook, see Han J. W. Drijvers, “Saint as Symbol: Con-
ceptions of the Person in Late Antiquity and Early Christianity,” in Hans G.
Kippenberg, Y. B. Kuiper, and A. F. Sanders, eds., Concepts of Person (Ber-
lin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1990), 137-157. An excellent overview of develop-
ments in the third through the sixth centuries C.E. is Alan G. Walmsley,
“Byzantine Palestine and Arabia: Urban Prosperity in Late Antiquity,” in N.
Christie and S. Loseby, eds., Towns in Transition: Urban Evolution in Late
Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (London: Scolar, 1996), 126-158.

On Christological disputes: F. M. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) is the classic treatment; Patrick T. R. Gray,
“The Legacy of Chalcedon: Christological Problems and Their Signifi-
cance,” in CCJ, 215-238, provides a clear, brief recounting of the tortuous
debates and their consequences.

240

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

On Christian asceticism and monasticism: Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert
a City (Oxford: Blackwell’s, 1966) is a good introduction; Peter Brown,
“The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Ro-
man Studies 61 (1971): 80-101, was a seminal contribution. Vincent L.
Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, eds., Asceticism (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1995), a massive tome, includes several useful chapters, par-
ticularly Averil Cameron’s “Ascetic Closure and the End of Antiquity,” pp.
147-161. On other aspects of Christian religiosity, see Derek Kruger,
“Christian Piety and Practice in the Sixth Century,” CC/, 291-315.

On Late Antique apocalypticism (mainly Christian): A good introduc-
tion is the first fifty or so pages of Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End:
Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1979). See also Alexander, Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, cited
above; and chapters by G. Reinink and W. van Bekkum in Bernard H.
Stolte and Gerrit J. Reinink, eds., The Reign ofHeraclius (610-641): Crisis
and Confrontation (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2002).

On Late Antique Judaism: Nicholas de Lange, “Jews in the Age of Jus-
tinian,” in CC], 401-426; Michael Avi-Yonah, The Jews under Roman and
Byzantine Rule: A Political History from the Bar Cochba War to the Arab
Conquest, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984); Gilbert Dagron and
Vincent Deroche, “Juifs et chretiens dans 1’Orient du Vile siecle,” Travauxet
Memoires, 11 (1991): 17-46; Gordon Darnell Newby, A History of the Jews of
Arabia (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988);
Christian-Julien Robin, “Himyar et Israel,” Academie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres, Comptes-Rendus des Seances de l’Annee 2004, avril-juin,
831-908.

On Heraclius, Walter E. Kaegi, Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), is the definitive study. Al-
though detailed, it is quite readable.

On the Sasanian Empire, see Touraj Daryaee, Sasanian Persia. The Rise
and Fall of an Empire (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2009). Also useful are the
more technical presentations of Michael Morony, “Sasanids,” El (2), and
(at much greater length) the Cambridge History of Iran, vol. Ill (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), which contains many excellent
chapters on aspects of Sasanian history (including, for example, their rela-

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

241

tions with Arabia and Byzantium). The Sasanians’ use of Zoroastrian/Aves-
tan myth to legitimize their claims to rule Iran is discussed in Touraj
Daryaee, “Memory and History: The Construction of the Past in Late An-
tique Persia,” Name-ye lran-e Bastan 1:2 (2001-2002): 1-14. See also Cam-
bridge History of Iran, III, 864-865, 409-410, and 692-696.

On Zoroastrianism: Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs
and Practices (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979) is the best intro-
duction; Robert C. Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism
(New York: Putnam, 1961); idem, Zurvan: A Zoroastrian Dilemma (Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1955).

On pre-Islamic Arabia: An excellent, readable general introduction is
Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Com-
ing of Islam (London: Routledge, 2001). See also many excellent articles in
F. E. Peters, ed., The Arabs and Arabia on the Eve of Islam (Aldershot: Ash-
gate, 1999). The clearest brief overview of the internal politics of Mecca on
the eve of Islam may still be that found in W. M. Watt, Muhammad at
Mecca (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 4-16, but the reader should be
aware that his discussions, elsewhere in the volume, of “tribal humanism”
and his assumption that Mecca was the linchpin of international luxury
trade have been decisively challenged in recent years— notably in Patricia
Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1987). Watt’s Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1956), 151-174, offers a similarly useful overview of Medina before
Islam, but now see also Michael Lecker, Muslims, Jews, and Pagans: Studies
on Early Islamic Medina (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995).

On the empires’ efforts to establish ties with Mecca and Yathrib, see M.
Lecker, “The Levying of Taxes for the Sasanians in Pre-Islamic Medina
(Yathrib),” JSA1 27 (2002): 109-126, and F. M. Donner, “The Background
to Islam,” in CCJ, 528, notes 16 and 17. Patricia Crone, “Making Sense of
the Qurashi Leather Trade,” BSOAS 70 (2007): 63-88, emphasizes the
great military importance of Arabian leather to the Byzantine and Sasanian
armies.

On Christians in the pre-Islamic Hijaz, see the suggestive reports in
Guillaume, Life, 572: a Christian slave among the slain at Hunayn, and 552:
pictures of Jesus and Mary inside the Ka'ba. The recent works that most

242

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

emphatically advances the claim that Christians were found in the Hijaz
are Gunter Liiling's Die Wiederentdeckung des Propheten Muhammad (Er-
langen: H. Liiling, 1981) and LJber den Ur-Qur’an (Erlangen: H. Ltiling,
1974), the latter now translated as A Challenge to Islam for Reformation
(Delhi: Motilal Benarsidass, 2003).

On the Nazoreans, see Francois de Blois, “Nasrani (Naifcopaiocf and
hanif (E&viKOg): Studies on the Religious Vocabulary of Christianity and
Islam,” BSOAS 65 (2002): 1-30.

On the survival of prophecy: Rebecca Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late
Second Temple Jewish Palestine (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993); on the Montanists, see Ronald E. Heine, ed., The Montanist Oracles
and Testimonia (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1989); on Man-
ichaeism, see Samuel N. C. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Em-
pire and Medieval China (Tubingen: Mohr, 1992).

On the ridda wars, see Elias S. Shoufani, A l-Riddah and the Muslim
Conquest of Arabia (Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing,
and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972).

2. Muhammad and the Believers’ Movement

A readable overview of the traditional view of Muhammad’s career, based
closely on and replicating the general contours of the Islamic sources, is W.
Montgomery Watt, Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1961)— which is based on his more detailed studies, Mu-
hammad at Mecca and Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1953 and 1956). In shorter compass, see the article “Muhammad” in
the El (2) by F. Buhl as revised by A. T. Welch. Another account, which
follows in its general outlines the traditional biography but is fully aware of
the recent revisionist and skeptical critique, is F. E. Peters, Muhammad and
the Origins of Islam (Albany: State University of New York, 1994). It also has
the virtue of providing many relevant passages of traditional Arabic sources
in English translation.

Many English translations of the Qur’an are available. Most are quite
serviceable, but the new reader should try comparing two or more on a

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

243

given passage to get some idea of the range of interpretations the text can
support. Because the Qur’an does not, for the most part, present its mate-
rial as connected narratives or gather all treatments of a particular issue in
one place, new readers will find that a detailed index is an indispensable
tool in exploring what the text says on a given subject and should consider
the fullness of the index when buying a translation.

A readable account of some of the recent debates about the Qur’an
among revisionist and traditionalist scholars is found in Toby Lester, “What
is the Koran?”, Atlantic Monthly (January 1999), 43-56. More up-to-date is
F. M. Donner, “The Qur’an in Recent Scholarship: Challenges and Desid-
erata,” in Gabriel Said Reynolds, ed.. The Quran in Its Historical Context
(London: Routledge, 2008), 29-50.

Western approaches to the traditional Islamic sources for the rise of Is-
lam are surveyed and categorized in the introduction to Donner, Narra-
tives. For the life of Muhammad specifically, see F. E. Peters, “The Quest
of the Historical Muhammad,” IJMES 23 (1991): 291-315, which has also
been reprinted at the end of his Muhammad and the Origins of Islam,
quoted above.

Recent revisionist views of Islam’s origins were presented in P. Crone
and M. Cook, Hagarism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)
and in J. Wansbrough’s Qur’anic Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1977), which first proposed the “late origin” theory of the Qur’an. The for-
mer, however, is not easy to follow, and the latter, even for specialists, is
virtually incomprehensible. Wansbrough’s ideas are best grasped by read-
ing the work of one of his sympathizers, such as Andrew Rippin, “Literary
Analysis of Qur’an, Tafsir, and Sira: The Methodologies of John Wans-
brough,” in Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. Richard C. Mar-
tin, 151-163 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985). I have offered a
critique of Wansbrough’s ideas on the Qur’an’s date in chapter 1 of Donner,
Narratives. The idea that the Qur’an may include “recycled” Arabian
Christian materials that antedate the prophet was advanced by Gunter Liil-
ing ( Uber den Ur-Qur’an and Wiederentdeckung, cited near the end of the
bibliography for chapter 1)— actually the earliest of the recent revisionists,
although his ideas have little in common with the “English school” repre-
sented by Wansbrough, Crone, and Cook and have had far less impact to

244

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

date. The publications of Christoph Luxenberg, starting with his The Syro-
Aramaic Reading of the Koran (Berlin: Schiler, 2007; German original,
2000), with its thesis that significant parts of the Qur’an are not in Arabic,
but Aramaic, created a great stir both because of its many specific reinter-
pretations of the text and because of the broader issues it raised concerning
the relationship between the Qur’an and Christian tradition. A noteworthy
contribution to the ongoing discussion of these issues is Gabriel Said
Reynolds, The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext (New York: Routledge,
forthcoming).

Many penetrating articles on early Islam have come from the pen of
M. }. Kister; see his collection, Studies in Jahiliyya and Early Islam (Lon-
don: Variorium, 1980), for a selection of these, or the journal Jerusalem
Studies in Arabic and Islam, where many of his more recent pieces have
appeared. A valuable study of the symbolic and legitimizing aspects in the
narratives of a number of episodes in Muhammad’s life (including nu-
merological symbolism) is Uri Rubin, In the Eye of the Beholder: The Life
of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims (Princeton, NJ: Darwin,
1995); it also refutes the assertion of some revisionists that many parts of
Muhammad’s biography are exegetical, that is, invented out of whole
cloth to “explain” a certain passage in the Qur’an, showing instead that
many accounts seem to be very early (which is not necessarily to say, of
course, that they are accurate records of what happened). On Muhammad
“feeding the multitudes” like Jesus, see Guillaume, Life, 451-452; for fur-
ther cases of this sort, see Toufic Fahd, “Probifemes de typologie dans la
«Sira» d’Ibn Ishaq,” in La vie du prophete Mahomet (Colloque de Stras-
bourg, octobre 19 80) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983),
67-75.

The basic ideas presented in this chapter regarding the ecumenical
character of the early Believers’ movement are developed in a more special-
ized way in Donner, “Believers to Muslims.”

Muhammad’s calling his movement hanifiyya is noted by Jacques
Waardenburg, “Towards a Periodization of Earliest Islam According to Its
Relations with Other Religions,” in Proceedings of the Ninth Congress of the
Union Europeenne des Arabisants et Islamisants, ed. R. Peters, 304-336
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), at p. 311.

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

245

The umma document, often misleadingly called the “Constitution of
Medina,” is discussed in a general way in R. B. Serjeant, “The Constitution
of Medina,” Islamic Quarterly 8 (1964): 3-16, and in greater detail in “The
Sunnah ]amicah, Pacts with the Yathrib Jews, and the Tahrim of Yathrib:
Analysis and Translation of the Documents Comprised in the So-Called
‘Constitution of Medina’,” BSOAS 41 (1978): 1-42. See Michael Leclcer,
The “Constitution of Medina”: Muhammad’s First Legal Document (Prince-
ton, NJ: Darwin, 2004), which studies it in great detail.

The idea that the Qur’an’s invective against mushrikun may be directed
not at pagans but rather at “soft” monotheists is advanced by G. Hawting,
The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999); a similar notion was proposed by Raimund Robert,
“Zur Bedeutung der drei letzten Worte von Sure 22, 30/31,” Orientalia 35
(1966): 28-32, and developed by Gunter Luling, Uberden Ur-Qur’an (Erlan-
gen: H. Luling, 1974), esp. 202-203.

Qur’anic piety is discussed in Donner, Narratives, chapter 2. The origi-
nal concept of zakat or s adaqa as a payment in expiation for sin, rather than
alms, is brilliantly explored in Suliman Bashear, “On the Origins and De-
velopment of the Meaning of Zakat in Islam,” Arabica 40 (1993): 84-113.
For parallels between the Believers’ piety and that of the late antique Chris-
tian tradition, see Ofer Livne-Kafri, “Early Muslim Ascetics and the World
of Christian Monasticism,” fSAI 20 (1996): 105-129. The quote about
prayer as the fabric of religious life is by N. Hanif from the entry “Salat
(Ritual Prayer)” in Encyclopedia of the Holy Qur’an, ed. N. K. Singh and A.
R. Agwan, 1309 (Delhi: Global Vision, 2000).

For the Qur’anic data on ritual prayer, dozens of references could be
provided, but the following will give the interested reader a start. Various
prayer times: Q. 2:238, 4:103, 11:114, 20:30, 30:17-18, 52:48-49, 73:2-7, and
76:25-26. Standing, kneeling, sitting: Q. 2:43, 4:103, and 5:55. Prostration: Q.
50:40, and 9:112. Call to prayer: Q. 5:58. Ablutions: Q. 5:6.

On the ‘ ashura ’ fast, see Suliman Bashear, “‘Ashura’, an Early Muslim
Fast,” Z eitschrift der deutschen morgenlandische Gesellschaft 141 (1991):
281-316.

On Jewish converts to Islam, see Michael Lecker, “Hudhayfa b. al-
Yaman and ‘Ammar b. Yasir, Jewish Converts to Islam,” Quaderni di Studi

246

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

Arabi 11 (1993): 149-162; idem, “Amr ibn Hazm al-Ansari and Qur’an 2,
256: “No Compulsion Is There in Religion” ‘Oriens 35 (1996): 57-64;
“Zayd b. Thabit, ‘A Jew with Two Sidelocks’: Judaism and Literacy in Pre-
Islamic Medina (Yathrib),” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 56 (1997):
259-273.

On Jewish Christianity as antecedent for Quranic prophetology, includ-
ing the notion of “seal of the prophets,” see Francois de Blois, “Elchasai—
Manes— Muhammad. Manichaismus und Islam in religionshistorischem
Vergleich,” Der Islam 81 (2004): 31-48. On prophecy in early Christianity,
see Ernst Kasemann, “The Beginnings of Christian Theology,” Journal for
Theology and the Church 6 (1969): 17-46, esp. 27-29.

For the early community’s eschatological and apocalyptic outlook, there
is as yet no satisfactory comprehensive treatment, but for a few examples,
see Lawrence I. Conrad, “Portents of the Hour: Hadith and Historiography
in the First Century a.h.,” Der Islam (forthcoming); Michael Cook, “The
Heraclian Dynasty in Muslim Eschatology,” Al-Qantara 13 (1992): 3-23;
Suliman Bashear, “Apocalyptic and Other Materials on Early Muslim-
Byzantine Wars: A Review of Arabic Sources," Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society I (1991): 173-207; and Wilferd Madelung, ‘“Abd Allah b. al-Zubayr
and the Mahdi,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 40 (1981): 291-305. The
idea that apocalyptic eschatology and realized eschatology might be found
simultaneously may seem like a logical impossibility, but the coexistence
of these concepts is known in other religious traditions, notably early Chris-
tianity; see David Aune, The Cultic Setting of Realized Eschatology in Early
Christianity (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972). Some scholars claim that the apoca-
lyptic tone is “not strong” in the Qur’an, but such statements ignore the
forcefulness and immediacy of the apocalyptic imagery used in many of
the Qur’an’s shorter chapters. For some thoughtful reflections on
Qur’anic eschatology, see Andrew Rippin, “The Commerce of Eschatol-
ogy,” in The Quran as Text, ed. Stefan Wild, 125-135 (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1996). The quote about “easily visualized scenes” is from Bernard Mc-
Ginn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 6.

My treatment of the Qur’an’s attitudes toward militancy and activism is
based on Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (Ox-

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

247

ford: Oxford University Press, 1999), which is both convincing and read-
able. On the Qur’an’s use of “escape clauses,” see F. M. Donner, “Fight for
God— But Do So with Kindness: Reflections on War, Peace, and Commu-
nal Identity in Early Islam,” in War and Peace in the Ancient World, ed. Kurt
A. Raafiaub, 297-311 297-311 (Oxford: Blackwell’s, 2007).

On the duty to “command good and forbid wrong” one may begin with
Michael Cook, Forbidding Wrong in Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2003).

3. The Expansion of the Community of Believers

A brief overview of the Islamic conquests is F. M. Donner, “Islam, Expansion
of” in J. Strayer, ed., Dictionary of the Middle Ages. A more detailed overview
of the issues can be found in F. M. Donner, “The Islamic Conquests” in
Companion to Middle Eastern History, ed. Youssef Choueiri, 28-51 (Malden,
MA: Blackwell’s, 2005). A readable older survey constructed within the pa-
rameters of the traditional paradigm is Francesco Gabrieli, Muhammad and
the Conquests of Islam (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968). The sketch of the ex-
pansion into Syria and Iraq provided here is based on Donner, Conquests.

On the reliability (or lack of it) of the conquest narratives, see Donner,
Narratives, esp. chap. 7; Albrecht Noth and Lawrence I. Conrad, The Early
Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source-Critical Study (Princeton, NJ: Darwin,
1994); and Chase F. Robinson, “The Conquest of Khuzistan: A Historio-
graphical Reassessment,” BSOAS Cl (2004): 14-39. On the questions of
centralization and the general skepticism of some writers toward the early
conquest narratives, see F. M. Donner, “Centralized Authority and Mili-
tary Autonomy in the Early Islamic Conquests,” in The Byzantine and
Early Islamic Near East, III: States, Resources and Armies, ed. Averil Cam-
eron, 337-360 (Princeton, NJ: Darwin, 1995).

On ta’lif al-qulub /“reconciling of hearts,” see Watt, Muhammad at Me-
dina, 348-353.

On ‘Amr ibn al-'As’s properties, see Michael Lecker, “The Estates of
'Amr b. al-‘As in Palestine: Notes on a New Negev Inscription,” BSOAS 52
(1989): 24-37.

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Notes and Guide to Further Reading

The quote on Jerusalem is from Bernard McGinn, “The Meaning of the
Millennium,” Encuentros 13 (January 1996): 10 [Lectures published by the
Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center, Washington, DC].

On the ndda wars, see Elias S. Shoufani, Al-Riddah and the Muslim
Conquest of Arabia (Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing,
and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972).

On the tribal composition of the early conquest armies in Syria and Iraq,
see Donner, Conquests, appendices.

On the ridda wars as the crucial experience leading to the crystallization
of standing armies, see F. M. Donner, “The Growth of Military Institu-
tions in the Early Caliphate and Their Relation to Civilian Authority,”
Al-Qantara 14(1993): 311-326.

On the hima at al-Rabadha, see Sa'd al-Din al-Rashid, Rabadhah. A
Portrait of Early Islamic Civilisation in Saudi Arabia (Riyadh: King Saud
University College of Arts, and Harlow, UK: Longmans, 1986), 1-7. Thick
deposits of camel bones at al-Rabadha were reported to me in a personal
communication in 1994 by one of the excavators. These are not mentioned
in the report by al-Rashid, but the latter does mention (p. 88) that some
inscriptions on camel bones were found (mostly business records).

The early Christian and other near-contemporary sources for Islam’s
origins are conveniently collected, translated, and discussed in Hoyland,
Seeing Islam, which is indispensable.

Absence of archaeological evidence of destruction associated with the
Islamic “conquests” is noted in Robert Schick, The Christian Communities
of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule (Princeton, NJ: Darwin, 1995),
infra, esp. 222-224. Specific examples: On Jerusalem, Meir Ben Dov, In the
Shadow of the Temple (Jerusalem: Keter, 1985); on Jerash (Gerasa), Iain
Browing, Jerash and the Decapolis (London: Chatto and Windus, 1982), 57-
58; on Hama, Harald Ingholt, Rapport Preliminaire sur sept campagnes de
fouilles a Hama en Syrie (1932-1938) (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1940),
136-139, on Level B, dated as Byzantine but probably Byzantine and early
Islamic; on Asqalan/Ashkelon, Lawrence E. Stager, Ashkelon Discovered
(Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeological Society, 1991), 53-54, discusses
the transition but notes that no significant remains mark it. More generally,
see Averil Cameron, “Interfaith Relations in the First Islamic Century,”

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

249

Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies 1/2 (Autumn 1999),
1-12.

On churches established or rebuilt shortly following the “conquest,” see
Schick, Christian Communities, infra. Michele Piccirillo, The Mosaics of
Jordan (Amman: American Center of Oriental Research, 1992) provides
descriptions, mostly from churches dating from the sixth and seventh cen-
turies, with sumptuous illustrations.

On early Christian texts mentioning Muhammad, see Robert Hoyland,
“The Earliest Christian Writings on Muhammad: An Appraisal,” in The
Biography of Muhammad: The Issue of the Sources, ed. Harald Motzki,
276-297 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000); also, especially, G. }. Reinink, “The
Beginnings of Syriac Apologetic Literature in Response to Islam,” Oriens
Christianus 77 (1993): 165-187. On the evolving claims for Muhammad’s
prophecy and their relation to responses in the Jewish and Christian com-
munities, see Sarah Stroumsa, “The Signs of Prophecy: The Emergence
and Early Development of a Theme in Arabic Theological Literature,”
Harvard Theological Review 78 (1985): 101-114.

On the status of Zoroastrians, see Y. Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion
in Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 72-76 and 198.

On early shahadas, see Donner, “Believers to Muslims,” 47-48. A. J.
Wensinck, ed., Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane (8 vols.,
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1936-1988), lists under shahada many that mention
only recognition of God’s oneness— not of Muhammad’s prophecy. M. J.
Kister, “. . . ilia bi-haqqihi ... A Study of an Early hadith," JSAI 5 (1984):
33-52, deals with the debate over whether it is an adequate shahada to say
only “There is no god but God,” without reference to Muhammad’s proph-
ecy. Guillaume, Life, 668, has a report suggesting that the basis of true faith
is recognition of God’s oneness, prayer, alms, fasting, pilgrimage, and rit-
ual purity, but recognition of Muhammad’s status as prophet is pointedly
missing. Hoyland, Seeing Islam, Excursus F (687-703), provides a tabula-
tion of dated Muslim writings up to a.h. 135/752-753 c.e.

Text for the quote from the Nestorian patriarch is found in Corpus Scrip-
torum Christianorum Orientalium, Series III, vol. 64, 248-251; cf. Tor An-
drae, “Der Ursprung des Islam und das Christentum,” Kyrkshistorisk drsskrift
23 (1923): 167; cited also in Sebastian Brock, “Syriac Views of Emergent

250

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

Islam,” in Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society, ed. G. H. A. Juyn-
boll, 9-21 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), at p. 15.

On Muslim treaty texts, see Albrecht Noth, “Die literarische Uberliefer-
ten Vertrage der Eroberungszeit . . . in Studien zum Minderheitenprob-
lem in Islam I, ed. Tilman Nagel et al., 282-304 (Bonn: Selbstverlag des
Orientalischen Seminars der Universitat, 1973).

On Believers sharing worship space with Christians in churches, see
Donner, “Believers to Muslims,” 51-52; Philip K. Hitti, The Origins of the
Islamic State (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916, 125 and 201, on
Damascus and Hims; and Suliman Bashear, “Qibla musharriqa and the
Early Muslim Prayer in Churches,” Muslim World 81 (1991): 267-282. On
the Cathisma Church, see Leah Di Segni, “Christian Epigraphy . . .”,
Aram 15 (2003): 247-267, at p. 248 (I thank Lennart Sundelin for bringing
this reference to my attention).

On Jerusalem, see Heribert Busse, “‘Omar b. al-Hattab in Jerusalem,”
JSAI 5 (1984): 73-119; Busse, ‘“Omar’s Image as the Conqueror of Jerusa-
lem,” JSAf 8 (1986): 149-168; and Busse, “Die ‘Umar-Moschee im ostli-
chen Atrium der Grabeskirche,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Palastina-Vereins
109 (1993): 73-82. The relevant passage from Arculf is translated and
discussed in Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 219-223.

The early conquest campaigns, as described by the Muslim narrative
sources, are beautifully depicted in visual form on the map by Ulrich Reb-
stock in the Ttibinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, Map B.VII.2, “The Is-
lamic Empire under the First Four Caliphs” (1989).

For the Zoroastrian tax collector, see Claude Cahen, “Fiscalite, Pro-
priete, Antagonismes Sociaux en Haute-Mesopotamie au temps des pre-
miers‘Abbasides d’apres Denys de Tell-Mahre,” Arabica 1 (1954): 136-152.

On Mosul and the Jazira, see Chase F. Robinson, Empire and Elites af-
ter the Muslim Conquest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000),
esp. 33-41.

On centralization, see F. M. Donner, “Centralized Authority and Mili-
tary Autonomy in the Early Islamic Conquests,” in The Byzantine and
Early Islamic Near East III: States, Resources and Armies, ed. Averil Cam-
eron, 337-360 (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995); for the Sebeos quote, see
Holyand, Seeing Islam, 131.

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

251

On the amsar/garrison towns, see Donald Whitcomb, “Anisar in Syria?
Syrian Cities after the Conquest," Aram 6 (1994): 13-33; for Ayla, see Whit-
comb, “The Misr of Ayla: New Evidence for the Early Islamic City,” in
Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan, V: Art and Technology
throughout the Ages, ed. G. Bisheh, 277-288 (Amman: Department of An-
tiquities, 1995). On the plan of Kufa, see Donner, Conquests, 226-236; and
Hichem Djait, Al-Kufa: naissance de la ville islamique (Paris: G.-P. Maison-
neuve et Larose, 1986). On Fustat, see Wladislaw Kubiak, Al-Fustat: Its
Foundation and Early Urban Development (Cairo: American University in
Cairo, 1987).

On the diwan, see Gerd-Riidiger Puin, “Der Diwan des ‘Umar ibn al-
Hattab: Ein Beitrag zur friihislamischen Verwaltungsgeschichte” (diss.
Bonn, 1970).

On the barid in the conquest period, see Adam Silverstein, “A Neglected
Chapter in the History of Caliphal State-Building,” JSAI 30 (2005): 293-317.

On the countryside “running itself” after the conquests and forwarding
taxes to the new regime, see Terry Wilfong, Women of feme: Lives in a Cop-
tic Town in Late Antique Egypt (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2002).

On settlement in Iraq and Syria, see Donner, Conquests, chap. 5,
esp. 239-250.

4. The Struggle for Leadership of the Community,
37-73/655-692

The meaning of ibn al-sabil is discussed in G.-R. Puin, “Der Diwan des
‘Umar ibn al-Hatttab” (diss. Bonn, 1970).

On the shura, see Gemot Rotter, Die Umayyaden und der zweite Bilrger-
krieg (680-692) (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1982), 7-16. The anecdote
about ‘Umar on his deathbed is found in Tab. i/2778-2779.

On cutting stipends to soldiers, see Tab. i/2929.

On the complex questions of landholding and the distribution of con-
quered lands, one may begin with Michael G. Morony, “Landholding in
Iraq,” in Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East, ed.

252

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

Tarif Khalidi, 209-222 (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1984). A
helpful survey in Arabic is Faleh Husayn, “Al-Dawla al-‘arabiyya al-
islamiyya wa-l-’ard al-maftuha khilal al-fatra al-rashida,” D irasat 22 (1995):
1807-1830.

On ‘Uthman’s changes to the pilgrimage rituals: Tab. i/2833-2835.

On the changing policies toward appointments among Abu Bakr, ‘Umar,
and 'Uthman, see Martin Hinds, “The Murder of the Caliph ‘Uthman,”
1JMES 3 (1972): 450-469.

On the codification of the Qur’an text— a hotly debated issue today— see
the surveys in W. M. Watt, Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1970), 40-56; and El (2), “Kuran,” section 3,
by A. T. Welch.

My description of the events of the First Civil War follows closely the de-
tailed accounting given in Wilferd Madelung, The Succession to Muham-
mad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Madelung, unfortu-
nately, has allowed himself to become virtually a partisan in the conflict,
unequivocally supporting the claims of ‘Ali. My own summary treatment of
these events, while based on Madelung’s, thus differs significantly from his
in its interpretation. Madelung emphasizes, in particular, the importance of
'Ali’s close kinship to the prophet; a contrasting view is provided by Asma
Afsaruddin, Excellence and Precedence (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), 277-284,
who contends that piety was more important than kinship.

The report of Yazid’s Taghlibi troops marching with the cross and ban-
ner of St. Sergius comes from a poem of al-Akhtal, the Christian court poet
of the Umayyads, cited in H. Lammens, “Le califat de Yazid Icr,” Melanges
de la faculte orientale de TUniversite Saint-Joseph de Beirut 5 (1911-1912):
229. Close ties of the tribe of Kalb with Quraysh even before Islam are
noted in M. J. Kister, “Mecca and the Tribes of Arabia,” in Studies in Is-
lamic History and Civilization in Honour of Professor David Ayalon, ed. M.
Sharon, 33-57 (Jerusalem: Cana, and Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), at 55-57.

On the quote from John bar Penkaye, see Donner “Believers to Mus-
lims,” 43-45; and G. J. Reinink, “The Beginnings of Syriac Apologetic
Literature in Response to Islam,” Oriens Christianus 77 (1993): 165-187.

On the inscriptions and other documents of Mu'awiya, qada’ al-
muminin, and so on, see Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 687-703, nos. 7, 8, 9, 16;

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

253

Dormer, “Believers to Muslims”; and Yusuf Ragib, “Une ere inconnue
d’Egypte musulmane: l’ere de la jurisdiction des croyants,” Annales isla-
mologiques 41 (2007): 187-207.

On the conquest of North Africa, including the role of slave capture in
it, see Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 28-37; and Elizabeth Sav-
age, A Gateway to Hell, a Gateway to Paradise (Princeton, NJ: Darwin,
1997). Also El (2), “Kusayla” by M. Talbi.

On the confused biography of Sergius ibn Mansur and the importance
of the family of John of Damascus as financial advisers to successive rulers,
see M.-F. Auzepy, “De la Palestine a Constantinople (Vlle-IXe siecles):
Etienne le Sabai'te et Jean Damascene,” Travaux et Memoires du Centre de
Recherche d’histoire et de la civilisation byzantines 12 (1994): 183-218, at
193-204; also C. Mango and R. Scott, trans., The Chronicle ofTheophanes
Confessor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 510, n. 4.

For a brief, clear survey of the events of the Second Civil War, see G. R.
Hawting, The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661-750
(London: Routledge, 1987), 46-57. More detailed reconstructions can be
found in ‘Abd al-Ameer ‘Abd Dixon, The Umayyad Caliphate 65-86/684-
705: A Political Study (London: Luzac, 1971); Gernot Rotter, Die Umayy-
aden und der zweite Burgerkrieg (680-692) (Wiesbaden: Steiner, in Komm.
fur DMG, 1982); and Chase Robinson, Abd al-Malik (Oxford: Oneworld,
2005).

Ibn al-Zubayr’s sermon disparaging Yazid is mentioned in Ahmad ibn
Jabir al-Baladhuri, Ansab al-ashraflVB, ed. Max Schloessinger (Jerusalem:
Hebrew University Press, 1938), 30.

The quote about al-Mukhtar is found in Tab. ii/650.

Pilgrimage leaders in 68/June 688: Tab. ii/782.

5. The Emergence of Islam

On ‘Abd al-Malik’s religious learning, Ibn Sa‘d, Tabaqat, ed. E. Sachau
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1917-1940), V, 172-174. Robinson, Abd al-Malik, 53-
57, notes the difficulties of knowing about his person.

254

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

On the theme of prophecy in Islamic historiography, see Donner, Narra-
tives, chap. 5.

On the Bishapur coins of the Zubayrids, see the discussion in Hoyland,
Seeing Islam, 550-554.

On the “cross on steps” and reform coins of ‘Abd al-Malik, see Michael
Bates, “History, Geography and Numismatics in the First Century of Is-
lamic Coinage,” Revue Suisse de Numismatique 65 (1986): 2310-2362;
Sheila Blair, “What Is the Date of the Dome of the Rock?,” in Raby and
Johns, Bayt al-Maqdis I, 59-88; and Clive Foss, “The Coinage of the First
Century of Islam,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 16 (2003): 748-760.

On the iconography of the Dome of the Rock, see Myriam Rosen-
Ayalon, The Early Islamic Monuments of al-Haram al-Sharif: An Icono-
graphic Study (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1989) [Qedem.
Monographs of the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusa-
lem, No. 28.]

On the Dome of the Rock generally, see the essays in Julian Raby and
Jeremy Johns, eds., Bayt al-Maqdis : 'Abd al-Malik’s Jerusalem and Jeremy
Johns, ed., Bayt al-Maqdis: Jerusalem and Early Islam (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1992 and 1999) [Oxford Studies in Islamic Art, IX, parts 1 and
2]; and Oleg Grabar, The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). The inscriptions inside
the Dome were published in facsimile by Christel Kessler, ‘“Abd al-Malik’s
Inscription in the Dome of the Rock: A Reconsideration,” Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society (1970): 2-14; a translation is provided in Appendix B
of this book. Recently, C. Luxenberg has retranslated the inscriptions in a
manner that supports his view that they advance a pre-trinitarian form of
Christianity, a view that has not received widespread support: C. Luxen-
berg, “Neudeutung der arabischen Inschrift im Felsendom zu Jerusalem,”
in Die dunklen Anfdnge: neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und friihen Ge-
schichte des Islam, ed. Karl-Heinz Ohlig and Gerd-R. Puin, 124-147 (Ber-
lin: Schiler, 2005).

On early shahadas, see the references cited for Chapter 3 above. An in-
scription mentioning Muhammad, Jesus, and ‘Uzayr is reported in Y. D.
Nevo, Z. Cohen, and D. Heftmann, Ancient Arab Inscriptions from the
Negev I ([Beersheba]: Ben-Gurion University/IPS, 1993), 54, no. ST

Notes and Guide to Further Reading

255

640(34). Another, dated 117/735, invokes “the Lord of Muhammad and
Abraham"; see Moshe Sharon, “Arabic Rock Inscriptions from the Negev,”
in Archaeological Survey of Israel, Ancient Rock Inscriptions, Supplement to
Map ofHar Nafha (196) 12-01 (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority,
1990), 22*, no. 66.1.

On parallels between Muslim, Christian, and Jewish prayer rituals, see
C. H. Becker, “Zur Geschichte des islamischen Kultus,” Der Islam 3 (1912):
374-399; E. Mittwoch, “Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des islamischen Ge-
bets und Kultus,” Ahhandlungen der koniglichen Preussischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Classe 1913 no. 2.

On the required five daily prayers, Uri Rubin, “Morning and Evening
Prayers in Islam,” JSAI 10 (1987): 40-64.

On the development of the Islamic origins story, see Donner,
Narratives.

On interpretation of “standing caliph” coins, see Clive Foss, “A Syrian
Coinage of Mu'awiya?,” Revue Numismatique 158 (2002): 353-365; also
Foss, “The Coinage of the First Century of Islam,” Journal of Roman Ar-
chaeology 16 (2003): 748-760; and Michael Bates, “Byzantine Coinage and
Its Imitations, Arab Coinage and Its Imitations: Arab-Byzantine Coinage,"
A ram 6 (1994): 381-403.

On the title khalifat Allah in literary sources, see Avraham Hakim,
“‘Umar ibn al-Khattab and the title khalifat Allah: A Textual Analysis,”
JSAI 30 (2005): 207-230; Wadad al-Qadi, “The Term ‘khalifa in Early Ex-
egetical Literature,” Die Welt des Islams 28 (1988): 392-411; and Patricia
Crone and Martin Hinds, God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First
Centuries of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

On the status of Jesus in early Islamic eschatology, see David Cook,
Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Princeton, NJ: Darwin, 2002), 323-334,
and Cook, “The Beginnings of Islam in Syria during the Umayyad Period”
(diss. University of Chicago, 2001).

On the Umayyads “stressing their links to chains of earlier prophets as
sources of authority,” see Uri Rubin, “Prophets and Caliphs: The Biblical
Foundations of the Umayyad Authority,” in Method and Theory in the
Study of Islamic Origins, ed. Herbert Berg, 73-99 (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
2003).

Glossary

agarenoi See muhajirun.

ahl al-bayt Literally, “people of the house,” often a designation for
members of the (extended) family of the prophet Muhammad;
sometimes a designation for people associated with the Ka'ba in
Mecca, called the “house of God.”

ahl al-dhimma Protected peoples, subjects of the Believers who paid
special tax in exchange for the contract of protection (dhimma) by
Believers.

ahl al-kitab “Peoples of the book,” that is, Christians and Jews, who
were considered by Believers to have received God’s revelations
previously.

camil Finance director for a province, usually working in tandem with
the amir or military governor.

amir Arabic term for military commander of an expeditionary force or
military governor of a province.

amir al-mu’minin “Commander of the Believers,” title given to successors
to Muhammad as leaders of the community of Believers/Muslims.

amsar See misr.

ansar Literally, “helpers,” the term for those people in Yathrib (later
Medina) who joined Muhammad’s movement.

258

Glossary

‘ashura’ The tenth day of the first month of the Muslim calendar,

Muharram. On this day, Shi'a Muslims commemorate the death of
Husayn ibn eAli at Karbala’ in 61 /680.
aya A verse of the Qur’an; literally, “sign” (of God’s favor),
barid The official courier service maintained by the amir al-muminins
for the exchange of letters and intelligence information,
caliph See khalifa.

dihqan Middle Persian (Pahlavi) word for local gentry who dominated life
in the Iranian countryside in the late antique and early Islamic periods,
diwan In the early Believers’ movement, the payroll or list of soldiers
(and others) eligible to receive a salary from the regime. As the original
diwan grew over time into a large bureaucracy to handle military
pay and other matters, the term diwan later acquired the sense of
“government bureau.” It also means the collected works of a poet—
the shared idea being that a diwan constitutes a listing or compilation
of something.

dyophysite Christians who believe that Jesus had two separate natures
(Greek, physis), one human and one divine, that existed indepen-
dently within him. Compare to monophysite.
fitna Quranic word meaning “temptation”; used by later Islamic
historiography to refer to the civil wars of the seventh century,
because some of the protagonists were deemed to have succumbed
to the temptation to seize worldly power,
futuh Arabic word meaning “opening” and “act of divine grace,” used in
Islamic historiography to refer to the seizure of new areas or towns by
the Believers’ movement; often translated as “conquest."
hadith A statement attributed to the prophet Muhammad, or a report
about something he did, prefaced by a chain of transmitting
authorities.

hajj The annual pilgrimage in the twelfth month of the Muslim

calendar, during which pilgrims engage in numerous rituals centered
on Mt. ‘Arafa and other sites near Mecca,
hanif Somewhat obscure term in the Qur’an, evidently meaning a
“natural” monotheist not belonging to one of the established
monotheistic religions (for example, Christianity or Judaism).

Glossary

259

haram In Arabian society of the seventh century, a sacred enclave or
delimited sacred space. Mecca was a leading haram on the eve of
Islam; Muhammad founded another haram in Yathrib after his
emigration there in 622 c.e.

Hashim The clan or lineage within the Meccan tribe of Quraysh to
which Muhammad the prophet belonged,
hijra Arabic word meaning “emigration,” “taking refuge,” and some-
times “settlement”; applied to the prophet Muhammad’s move from
Mecca to Medina (622 c.e.), which became year 1 of the Muslim
calendar; also applied, in the early years of the Believers’ move-
ment, to the resettlement of Believers outside Arabia. See
muhajirun.

hima Protected pasture, reserved by the amir al-muminin to maintain
the livestock (especially camels) given as tax payments,
imam, imamate In ritual prayer, the person who prays in front of the
others, with whose movements the other worshippers coordinate their
own; in a more general sense, an imam is someone who is recognized
as a leader in a particular context. Among the Shi'a, imam came by
the second century AH to mean a God-guided leader of the whole
community of Muslims, endowed with secret knowledge essential for
the salvation of the community as a whole, and therefore the single
Muslim who could rightly claim to be amir al-mu’minin (even though
he did not actually hold that position),
jihad “Striving, exertion”; hence, in some contexts, “fighting against,
struggling against, holy war.”

Kalra The cubical stone structure in Mecca that is the central cult site
for the Islamic faith and the focus of daily prayers,
kafir (plural, kafirun) An unbeliever; literally “ingrate,” one who is not
grateful to God for His bounties.

khalifa Qur’anic term adopted by the amir al-muminin 'Abd al-Malik
(ruled 685-705) as alternative title for the head of state; anglicized as
“caliph.”

khawarij Literally, “those who go out,” the original khawarij were

ultra-pious members of the early community of Believers who broke
with the amir al-mu’minin 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, whom they considered

260

Glossary

guilty of a grave sin (and therefore unqualified to lead) because of his
decision to submit the question of leadership to arbitration,
khutba The sermon delivered during the noontime prayer on Fridays.
Koran See Quran,
kuff Unbelief; see kafir.
magaritai See muhajirun.

mawla (plural, mawali) Client of an Arabian kin group, who though of
different lineage is considered functionally a member of the kin
group. New converts often held this status,
mhaggraye See muhajirun.

mihrab A niche in the wall of a mosque or place of prayer indicating the
direction of the qibla, toward which one faces during prayer,
minbar The elevated pulpit from which a prayer leader delivers the
khutba or sermon during Friday prayers,
misr (plural, amsar) Garrison towns that the military forces of the
Believers’ movement established as bases and which developed
over time into major cities, including Kufa and Basra in Iraq,

Fustat in Egypt, Qayrawan in North Africa, and Marv in Central
Asia.

monophysite Christians who believed that Jesus had only one nature
(Greek, physis ) that was simultaneously human and divine in
character. The Byzantine “Orthodox” church condemned monophy-
sitism at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 c.E. Compare to
dyophysite.

muhajirun Those who have made hijra, especially those Meccans who
were early followers of the prophet Muhammad and migrated with
him to Yathrib (Medina). It was also used to refer to Arabian Believers
who migrated to lands outside Arabia during the first expansion of
the movement. The term shows up in Greek and Syriac sources
(Syriac, mhaggraye; Greek, agarenoi or magaritai) as the first
designation for the Believers when they appear in the lands outside
Arabia.

mu’min (plural, mu minun) Believer in the one God who lives righ-
teously in accordance with God s revealed laws; in Qur’anic usage,
can include righteous ahl al-kitab (Christians and Jews).

Glossary

261

mushrik (plural, mushrikun) “Associators,” those who associate other
beings with God and hence deny His oneness,
muslim In the Qur'an, one who submits himself to God’s will and law;
perhaps specifically a follower of the Qur'an as revelation and law,
rather than the Gospels or Torah.

nabi A prophet, sent by God to warn and guide a people. Compare to
rasul.

qada’, qadi The Qur’an uses qada to refer to God’s decree or decisive
action; it came to be used for the jurisdiction exercised by those
charged with deciding legal disputes on the basis of the Qur’an.
These officials came to be called qadis.
qibla The direction toward the Ka‘ba in Mecca, which Muslims face
during prayers.

Qur’an (Koran) The sacred scripture of Muslims, believed by them to
have been revealed to the prophet Muhammad (died 632 C.E.) by
God. Often abbreviated as “Q.” in this book.

Quraysh The tribe of Mecca to which Muhammad the prophet
belonged.

rashidun “Rightly guided"; A retrospective term of later Islamic

historiography, designating the first four successors to the prophet
Muhammad: Abu Bakr (ruled 11-13/632-634), ‘Umar (ruled
13-23/634-644), ‘Uthman (ruled 23-35/644-656), and Ali (ruled
35-40/656-661). The term reflected the theological decision to make
off-limits the debate on the rightfulness of these persons’ claims,
which was threatening to tear the community apart,
rasul Messenger or apostle, especially someone sent by God to be head
of a religious community. Compare to nabi.
ridda An Arabic word meaning “going back," “replying,” or “returning,”
used in later Islamic tradition as a pejorative term for the resistance
within Arabia to the expansion of the Believers’ community under
the leadership of Abu Bakr (ruled 11-13/632-634). In later Islamic
tradition, it carried the sense of “apostasy.”
sabb The practice of cursing one’s political opponents during the

sermon in Friday prayer; practiced especially by the Umayyads and
the Alids in their struggles for leadership.

262

Glossary

sadaqa Tax paid to the Believers’ movement; sometimes equated with
zakat, it seems in many sources to be especially linked to payments
made by pastoral nomads.

sa’ifa Summer raids launched by the Believers/Muslims, especially
against Byzantine territory in Anatolia,
salah or salat Ritual prayer for Believers/Muslims, constituting several
rak ‘as consisting of standing, bowing, prostrations, and certain
recitations while facing the Ka'ba, performed at prescribed times of
the day.

shahada “Bearing witness,” the basic statement of faith of Muslims:
"There is no god except God, Muhammad is the apostle of God.”
Saying it became one of the five pillars or basic rituals of the Islamic
faith.

shi'a, Shi at ‘Ali Arabic shia basically means “party, faction.” The party
of cAli ibn Abi Talib, the prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-
law, backed him during the First Civil War (656-661 C.E.). Later, his
followers came to revere all of 'Ali’s descendants and asserted that
they had a special claim on leadership of the community. See imam.
shura Consultative council of leading members of the community,
convened to decide important matters, especially questions of
leadership; traditionally, a shura’ s members were to debate an issue
until complete consensus was attained,
sura A chapter of the Quran; all bear names (“The Cow,” “Repen-
tance,” and so on) and are also traditionally given numbers (for
example, “The Cow” is Sura 2).

tanzil Literally, “sending down,” this became the standard term for the
process by which passages of the Qur’an were revealed by God to
Muhammad. Hence, “[the process of] revelation.”
tawwabun “The penitents,” a group of early Shi'a who regretted not
supporting adequately the movement of Husayn ibn ‘Ali, killed by an
Umayyad governor at Karbala’ in Iraq in 61/680.
thughur The fortified border marches of the Believers’ domains,
especially those facing the Byzantine empire; literally, “gaps” or
“spaces between the teeth” in Arabic, referring to the mountain
passes that needed to be fortified against outside invasion.

Glossary

263

umma Community, particularly the community of Believers.

'umra The “lesser pilgrimage” (compare to hajj), involving circumam-
bulation of the Ka'ba and various other rituals in Mecca itself. These
may be conducted at any time of the year,
zakat In Islamic law, “alms, almsgiving,” one of the “five pillars” or basic
rituals of the faith. In Muhammad’s time, a payment in expiation of
past sins.

Illustration Credits

Page 6: Walls of Constantinople. Wikimedia/Nevit Dilnien, December
2000.

Page 8: Hagia Sophia. Wikiinedia/“Bigdaddy 1204 " June 2006.

Page 9: Roman road in Syria. Author photo, November 1966.

Page 12: Mar Saba. Wikimedia, January 2006.

Page 15: St. Simeon. Author photo, August 1974.

Page 19: Sasanian Throne-Hall at Ctesiphon. Author photo, May 1967.
Page 21: Triumph of Shapur, Bishapur. Courtesy of Touraj Daryaee.

Page 29: Bar’an Temple, Ma’rib. Wikimedia/Bernard Cagnon, August
1986.

Page 36: Jabrin oasis, Oman. Author photo, January 1977.

Page 37: The Ka'ba. Al-Sayyid ‘Abd al-Ghaffar/C. Snouck Hurgronje, ca.
1890. Courtesy of E. J. Brill, Leiden.

Page 55: An Early Qur’an. Dar al-Makhtutat, SanY, Yemen, No. 01-25-1.
Courtesy of Gerd-R. Puin.

Page 108: Floor from St. Menas, Rihab. Author photo. February 2001.
Page 113: Early coins. Courtesy of the American Numismatic Society,
ANS 1977.71.13 and ANS 1954.112.5.

Page 138: Ayla. Author photo, March 2001; plan courtesy of Donald
Whitcomb.

266

Illustration Credits

Page 187: Coins of rivals to the Umayyads. Courtesy of the American
Numismatic Society, ANS 1951.1483 and ANS 1953.9.4.

Page 200: Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem. Author photo, April 1967.

Page 201: Unmi Qays. Author photo, February 2001.

Page 207: Letter of Qurra ibn Sharik. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of
the University of Chicago. OI 13756.

Page 210: Two coins of ‘Abd al-Malik. Courtesy of the American Numis-
matic Society, ANS 1970.63.1 and ANS 1002.1.406.

Page 223: Tomb of ‘Umar II. Author photo, August 2005.

Index

Abazqubadh, 128
Abbasid dynasty, 212
‘Abd Allah ibn Abi Sarli (early governor
of Egypt for 'Uthman), 1?0, 152,

155

‘Abd Allah ibn al-'Abbas (early Qur’an
exegete and scholar, and sometime
political figure), 152, 168, 177-178
‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr (rival amir
al-mu ’minin to Umayyads): Second
Civil War, 177-188, 192-195; as amir
al-mu ’minin, 182, coins issued
bv, 187, 205; changes to Ka'ba by,

215

‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Amir ibn Kurayz
(governor of Basra), BO, 152, 171,
173-174

‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Umar (prominent early
follower of prophet), 177-178
‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (Umayyad
amir al-mu 'minin, 65-86/685-705);
Second Civil War, 183, 186-188; as
amir al-mu 'minin, 188, 195-203, 221,
253; campaigns of expansion of,
196—199; piety of, 197; Dome of the
Rock of, 199-202, 205, 208, 213, 221,

233-235, 254-255; new Qur'an of,
206-208, 221; icons of dynasty of,
208-210, 221, 254; khalifat allah title
of, 209-211, 255; hajj of, 215-216. See
also Emergence of Islam
‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr,

177-178

‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Awf (early convert,
member of shura), 41, 168
‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Khalid ibn al-Walid
(commander in conquest of Armenia),
117

Abraha, Yemenite king, 34
Abraham, 49, 60, 66, 71
Abu Bakr (father-in-law and first

successor of Muhammad, 1 1-13/632-
634), 41, 43, 94-95; selection as
successor of Muhammad, 98-99,
146-148; campaigns of expansion of,

99- 106, 120-123, 151; taxation by,

100- 102; death of, 123; on succession,
169

Abu Jahl (chief of Makhzum clan and
bitter opponent of prophet), 42
Abu Lahab (uncle and bitter opponent of
prophet), 42

268

Index

Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari (commander in
conquest and governor of Iraq),
128-129, 152, 154, 159, 161-162, 165
Abu Sufyan (chief of Umayya clan in
Muhammad’s time), 44, 50, 95-96
Abu Talib (paternal uncle and key
supporter of Muhammad), 40, 42
Abu ‘Ubavd al-Qasim ibn Sallam
(ninth-century author), 227
Abu 'Ubavd al-Thaqafi (commander in
conquest of Iraq), 126
Abu ‘Ubayda ibn al-]arrah (commander
in conquest of Syria), 121, 124-125
Activism of early Believers, 82-88,
246-247; hijra as, 43, 85-86, 118, 134,
203-204; jihad as, 82-88, 116, 172
Adam, 60
Adhruh, 152
Adulis, 4, 33
Adultery. 135
Aelana, 139

Afghanistan, 105, 129-130, 173-174
Africa (Byzantine province), 130, 173
Ahriman, 18-20
Ahwaz, 128

‘A’isha (favorite wife of prophet, daughter
of Abu Bakr), 43, 50,95,157-159
Alcohol and intoxication, 66
Aleppo, 124
Alexander the Great, 5
Alexandria, 132

"Ali ibn Abu Talib (cousin and son-in-law
of prophet and his fourth successor,
35-40/656-661), 41, 43, 98. 102, 133; as
amir al-mu’minin, 157-158, 160, 163;
First Civil War of, 157-166, 170; death
and succession of, 166-167; kinship to
prophet of, 168; Shi'a allegiance to,
178-180, 183-184, 190-191
Almsgiving, 63-64, 245
Amir al-mu’minin, 98-99, 105, 133, 134,
144, 150; First Civil War struggles over,
163, 164-165, 167; Second Civil War
struggles over, 177-188
'Amir tribe, 101

‘Ammar ibn Yasir (early Believer and
supporter of 'Ali), 168
'Amr ibn al-'As (conqueror and governor
of Egypt), 120-121, 132, 151-152;
political and military career of, 93, 95,
157, 160-163, 165, 169; Syrian estates
of, 96-97, 247; as governor of Egypt,

171

'Amr ibn al-Zubayr (brother of 'Abd Allah
ibn al-Zubayr), 180, 189
'Amr ibn Sa'id ibn al ‘As (Umayyad rebel
against 'Abd al-Malik), 186-188
Amsar (garrison towns), 136-141, 251;
immigrants from Arabia in, 150; as
bases for standing armies, 172
Anastasius of Sinai, 107
Anatolia, 174
Anbar, 122
Angels, 60-61
Antioch, 8, 124
Anti-Semitism, 13

Apocalypticism, 15-16, 240, 246; of early
Believers’ movement, 78-82, 97, 125;
as motivator for conquests, 143-144;
redeemer (mahdi) of, 183-184, 192
‘Aqrabaf 101
Al-Aqsa Mosque, 125
Arabian peninsula: of late antiquity, 4,

27- 34; map of, 28; tribal structure of,

28- 29; pre-Islamic religious practices
in, 29-31, 35, 41, 58-59, 241-242;
haram settlements of, 30, 35-36, 40;
Christian communities of, 30-31, 38,
54, 56; Jewish communities of, 30-31,
35, 38, 42; tradition of prophecy in, 31;
economic significance of, 32-34; ridda
campaigns unifying, 100-105, 242,

248. See also Mecca; Medina (Yathrib)

Arabic language, 139-140, 218-220
'arabiyya literary language, 3, 218
Arab political identity, 88, 217-220
‘Arafat, 64

Arculf (seventh-century European
traveler to Palestine), 125
Armenia, 130-131

Index

269

Arwad, 174
Asad clan, 41, 103
Asceticism, 13-15, 67, 240
Ashja’ tribe, 102
‘ashura’, 64
Aslam tribe, 100, 102
Aswad al-'Ansi (“false prophet” in
Yemen), 100, 127
Awraba tribe, 172-174
Aws clan, 35, 42, 74, 98
Axtim (Ethiopia), 4, 33, 34
Ayla, 136-138, 140
'Ayn al-Tamr, 122
‘Ayn Warda, battle of, 184, 189
Azd tribe, 103, 124

Badr raid, 46

Bajila tribe, 102, 103, 126

Bakr tribe, 100, 102

Ba'labakk, 123

Bali tribe, 102, 124

Balqa’, 121

Bam, 130

Banu Qayla clan, 42
Banu Sa'ida clan, 98
Bar’an Temple, Ma’rib, 29
Barca, 130

Bar Penkaye. See John bar Penkaye
(Syriac chronicler)

Basra, 128-130, 136, 172; First Civil War
in, 154-156, 159, 165; Battle of the
Camel of, 159; strategic importance of,
173-174
Baysan, 123

Believers' (mu ‘ minun ) movement, 24,
43-45, 58, 203-204. See also Early
Believers’ movement; Emigrants
(muhajirun); Helpers (ansar)

Belisarius (Byzantine general), 7
Berbers, 172-174
Bi’r Ma'una raid, 46
Blessings, 68
Bostra, 123

Busr ibn Abi Artat (general for Mu'awiya),
166

Bridge, battle of the, 126
Buzakha, battle of, 101
Byzantine Empire, 1-9, 239; maps of, 2,
26; Constantinople, 4-8, 131, 174-175,
196; Christianity of, 5, 9-16; reach of,
5-6, 9; vision of united world order of,
5-7, 10; Justinian’s goals for, 7; wars
with Sasanians of, 8-9, 18, 23-27;
anti-Semitism in, 13; daily life in,

16-17; instable frontiers of, 22;
alliances in Arabia of, 32-34; accounts
of Islam in, 52-53,92, 106-109,
111-113, 116-118, 134, 142, 248-250;
Believers' expansion into, 105-107,
115-118, 121-126, 130-133, 174-175,
196-197; attacks on Arabian empire by,
186

Byzantine-Sasanian Wars, 8-9, 18,

23-27

Caesarea, 107, 118, 125
Caliphs (khalifa), 99
Camel, battle of the, 159
Campaigns of expansion. See Expansion
of the Believers’ rule
Cathisma Church, 115, 214
Caucasus, 105, 117
Central Asia, 105, 130
Charity (zakat and sadaqa ), 63-64, 245
Christians/Christianity, 3; liturgical
languages of, 3; of Byzantine empire, 5,

9- 16; Justinian’s Edict of 554 C.E., 5;
doctrinal debates and sectarianism in,

10- 13, 56, 239-240; anti-Semitism of,
13; asceticism and the monastic
movement in, 13-15, 67-68, 240;
apocalypticism in, 15-16, 246; of
Sasanian Empire, 20-22, in Arabia,
30-3], 38, 241-242; trinitarian doctrine
of, 58-59, 70, 77, 200-201, 204,
212-214, 221; fasting practices of, 64;
in Believers' movement, 69-71, 87,

204, 206,212-214,221-222,249;
writings on the Believers by, 92,
111-112, 222-223; role of Jerusalem

270

Index

Christians/Christianity, (continued)
for, 97, 201; conquest by early Believers
of, 109-110, 124, 173, 176-177; in
Believers’ civil wars, 176, 177, 181-183;
persistence in Syria of, 222
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem,
125

Civic life, 3, 17

Civil wars (fitna), 145-193, 156, 251-253;
leadership disputes causing, 145-155,
189; First Civil War, 154-170; the year
of coming together of, 170; Second
Civil War, 177-188; ideological basis
of, 189-190; savagery of, 189-190;
new era emerging from, 190-193;
ecumenism of, 193; as sign of the Last
Judgment, 199

Coins, 91-92, 99, 187, 205, 208-210, 221,
254

Commerce. See Trade
Community of Believers. See Believers’
(mu'minun) movement
Conciliation of hearts, 169
Conquests. See Expansion of the
Believers’ rule

Constantine I, Byzantine emperor, 5, 9
Constantinople, 4-5, 131; land walls of, 6;
great buildings of, 7-8; Believers’ raids
on, 174, 175, 196
Council of Chalcedon (451), 11
Council of F.phesius (431), 11-12
Crete, 174
Crusades, 125

Ctesiphon, 17-18, 19,21, 128
Cursing the opponent (sabb), 174
Cyrenaica, 130

Cyrus, patriarch of Alexandria, 132

Dahhak ibn Qays (shifts allegiance from
Umayvads to Ibn al-Zubayr in Syria),
182-183

Damascus, 123, 139-140, 152
Darabgird, 130
Dathemon, battle of, 107
Dathin, battle of, 106, 121

Dayral-Jathliq, battle off, 188
Dhuhl tribe, 122
Dhu Nuwas, Himyarite king, 34
Diacritical marks, xvii-jtcviii, 207-208
Dietary rules, 66, 202
Diocletian, Byzantine emperor, 6
Diwan system, 136, 251
Documentary sources. See Sources
Dome of the Rock, 199-202, 205, 208,
213, 221, 233-235, 254-255
Donatists, 12

Double shahada, 205-206, 208-210, 221,
254-255
Dress, 66

Dumatal-Jandal, 47, 96', 162
Dvin, 131

Dyophysite churches, 15

Early Believers’ movement, 56-86, 94-95,
164, 172, 190, 204, 206, 244-247;
umma (community) document, 44, 72-
75, 227-232, 245; literary sources on,
50-57; core tenets of, 57-61, 197-199;
piety and righteous behavior of, 61-68;
ecumenical monotheism of, 68-74, 87,
212-214, 221, 244-245, 249; Muham-
mad prophetic status in, 74-77; apoca-
lypticism of, 78-82, 97, 246; activism
(jihad and hijra) of, 82-88, 1 18, 134,
172, 246-247; leadership struggles in,
97-106, 145-155. See also Civil wars
(fitna); Emergence of Islam; Expansion
of the Believers’ rule
Earthquakes, 7

Ecumenism, 68-74, 87, 119, 212,

244-245; in expanded territories of
Believers, 108-118, 176-177, 249-250;
in shared places of worship, 115, 250;
during civil wars, 193; later restrictions
on, 203-204, 221-222
Edict of Milan, 9-10

Egypt, 105, 107; Believers’ expansion into,
108-110, 131-132; language use in,

1 39; governance of, 141, 152; First Civil
War in, 160; Second Civil War in, 183

Index

271

Ella Asbeha, Axumite king, 34
Emergence of Islam, 194-224; reunifica-
tion under llmayyad dynasty in,
195-203; Dome of the Rock, 199-202,
205, 213, 221, 233-235; Muslim
identity in, 203-204, 217, 220-223;
double shahada in, 205-206, 208-210,
212; status of Mohammad as prophet
in, 205-206, 216-217; collection of
hadiths in, 206, 215; improved Qur’an
(Koran) of, 206-208; standardized
iconography of, 208-210, 254-255;
standardized weights and measures of,
209; khalifat allah title in, 209-211, 255;
anti-trinitarian message of, 212-214,
221; ritual practices in, 214-216; origin
and conquest stories of, 216-217, 255;
Arab political identity in, 217-220
Emigrants (muhajirun), 43-45, 49, 98,
102, 147-148
Enjoyment, 68
Erzurum, 131

Eschatology. See Apocalypticism
Ethiopia (Axum), 4, 33, 34
Expansion of the Believers’ rule, 90-144,
247-251; traditional Muslim accounts
of, 90-91, 119-120; contemporary
accounts of, 91-92, 106-109, 142;
during Muhammad's last years, 92-97;
religious motivation in, 94, 97,

107-119, 125, 143-144, 148, 172, 197;
taxation (sadaqa) of, 94, 98, 100-102,
112-113, 117, 122, 130, 197; year of
delegations of, 94; leadership struggles
during, 97-106; under Abu Bakr,
99-105; ridda campaigns of, 100-105,
116, 242, 248; hierarchy of Believers
during, 102-103; subject populations
of, 102-103; conquest beyond Arabia,
105-109, 116-118, 120-133, 172-174;
ecumenical monotheism of, 107-119,
176-177; treaties of, 117-118; maps of,
120, 198; military units of, 124-127,

1 29; institutions of governance of,
133—142, 171-172; material incentives

for, 143; undeer Mu'awiya, 171-174, 253;
late conquestts of, 196-198

Fahl, 123

False prophets,. 100-101
Fars, 187, 205
Fasting, 64-65,, 215, 245
Fatima (daughter of prophet), 43, 133, 157
Fihrclan, 171, 182
First Civil Warr, 154-170, 252; early
dissidents of, 154-156; Battle of the
Camel of, 1 559; Kharijites of, 162-165,
166, 167; ending of, 166-167
Fitna, Fitan, 1‘45-146. See also First Civil
War; Secornd Civil War
Followers of Muhammad. See Believers’
(mu ’minun)) movement
Fustat, 132, 13)9, 154-156, 172

Gabitha, battle of, 107
Gadara, 201

Gaza, battle o>f, 106, 121
Georgia, 117
Ghassan tribe;, 32, 124
Ghatafan trib e, 100-101
Ghifar tribe, 102
Gorgan region, 129
Gordian 111, {3yzantine emperor, 21
Governance by the Believers, 133-142,
250; the shura in, 132-133, 147, 158,

163, 251; enforcement of religious
observance jn, 134-135, 142-143; role
of amir al-tnu ’minin in, 134-135, 144,

1 50; generals and governors of,

135- 136, 140-141, 152-153; distribu-
tion of lands and wealth under, 136,
140-141, 148-149, 176, 251-252;
standing army in, 136, 172, 174;
Believers’ settlements (amsar) in,

136- 141, 150, 251; Arabic language of.
139-140; resettlements of native
populations under, 141-142; under
Mu'awiya, 171-172; Christian and
Jewish administrators of, 176, 182, 192,
222-223, 250

272

Index

Habib ibn Maslama al-Fihri (commander
in conquests of Mesopotamia and
Armenia), 117, 131
Hadith collections, 206, 215
Hadramawt tribe, 124
Hafsa, 95

Hagia Sophia, 7-8

Hajjaj ibn Yusuf (general and governor of
Iraq for 'Abd al-Malik), 188, 197,
206-208

Hamdan tribe, 124
Hanifa tribe, 101, 102
Harams, 30, 35-37, 40
Harra, battle of the, 180—181, 190
Hasan ibn ‘Ali (elder son of 'Ali), 158,
166-167, 178
Hashim clan, 42, 147, 161
Hassan ibn Malik ibn Bahdal (chief of
Syrian Kalb tribe), 182
Hawazin tribe, 49, 95, 101
Helpers (ansar), 43-45, 49, 102; in
leadership struggles, 98, 151, 168; in
First Civil War, 156-157, 159-160
Hephthalites (White Huns), 173-174
Heraclius, Byzantine emperor, 24-26,
124,240

‘The Heresy of the Ishmaelites" (John of
Damascus), 223

Hijaz region, 34-35, 120, 126-127; in
First Civil War, 160; in Second Civil
War, 180-188; loss of political power
of, 191; standardized weights and
measures of, 209. See also Mecca;
Medina (Yathrib)

Hijra, 43, 85-86, 118, 134, 203-204
Hirns, 124, 131, 139-140, 152, 172
Himyar kingdom, 28, 124
Hira, 122

Hisham ibn 'Abd al-Malik ( amir
al-mu 'minin, 105-125/724-743), 222
The Hour. See Last Judgment
Hudaybiya agreement, 48-49, 60, 65-66,
92-93

Hujr ibn ‘Adi ai-Kindi (early Shi'ite
dissident), 174-175

Hunayn, battle of, 49
Husayn ibn ‘Ali (younger son of ‘Ali,
rebel against Yazid ibn Mu'awiya),
177-180, 184-185, 190-191

Iberia, 105, 196

Ibn Mas'ud (early Kufan Qur'an reciter),
154

Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (early scholar), 216
Ibrahim ibn al-Ashtar (Shi'ite leader in
Iraq), 185
‘Ijl tribe, 122

Indus valley, 105, 196-197
Inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock,
233-235, 254-255

Iran, 105; Believers’ expansion into,
108-112, 129-131; language use in,

140

Iraq, 105; Believers' expansion into,
107-110, 122, 125-129; amsar (garrison
towns) in, 136; First Civil War in, 160;
Second Civil War in, 183-188
Isfahan, 129

Islam: core tenets of, 41 , 46, 49; meaning
of islam, 57-58, 71-72; emergence
from the Believers’ movement of,
111-112, 119, 194-224; statement of
faith of, 112; Christian writings on,
222-223. See also Qur’an (Koran)
Islamic calendar (AH), xviii, 43
Islamic era, 3
Istakhr, 130, 140
‘lyad, 117

‘Iyad ibn Ghanm (commander in
conquest of Mesopotamia), 131

Jafnid clan of al-Jabiva, 32
Jalula’, battle of, ,128

Jarir ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Bajali (commander
in conquest of Iraq), 126, 152
Jawlan plateau, 121

Jerusalem, 97, 250; Mar Saba monastery
of, 12; religious significance of, 13, 25,
27, 125, 143-144; Temple Mount of,

13, 125, 200-202; Sasanian occupa-

Index

m

tion of, 25-27; Believers' raids on,

107; Believers’ occupation of, 125;
Dome of the Rock of, 199-202, 205,
208, 2B, 221, 235-235, 254-255
Jesus, 60, 212-213, 255; doctrinal
debates over nature of, 10-13; on the
Temple Mount, 13; in apocalyptic
predictions, 16

Jews/Judaism: anti-Semitism of
Christians toward, 13; Babylonian
communities of, 20, 212; Arabian
communities of, 30-31, 35, 38, 42, 44,
240; clashes with Muhammad of,
46-47, 73-74, 82; fasting practices of,
64; in Believers’ movement, 69-74, 87,
204, 206, 221-222, 245-246, 249;
writings on the Believers by, 92,

111- 112; role of Jerusalem for, 97, 201;
under conquest by early Believers,
109-110, 141-142, 176-177

Jihad, 87-88, 116; as activism of early
Believers, 82-86, 116, 172, 246-247;
classic doctrine of, 85
Job, 60

John bar Penkaye (Syriac chronicler),

112- 114, 142, 176

John of Damascus (financial administra-
tor for later Umayyads), 176, 222-223,
253

Judgment Day. See Last Judgment
Jndham tribe, 124, 182-183
Juhayna tribe, 102
Julanda clan of Oman, 32
Jurjan, 196

Justinian 1, Byzantine emperor, 7; Edict
of 554 C.E., 5; Hagia Sophia of, 7-8;
invasion of Yemen by, 34

Ka'ba shrine, 35, 37, 40, 241; as pilgrim-
age destination, 47, 64-66; origins of,
49, 66; purification of, 49, 66; Second
Civil War, 181; restoration of, 21 5
Kabul, 173-174

Kalb tribe, 176, 177, 181-183, 192-193,
212,252

Karbala1, 178, 184-185, 190-191
Kaskar, 122

Kavad II, Sasanian king, 26-27
Kazerun, 130

Khadija, first wife of Muhammad, 40-42
Khalid ibn al-'As (governor of Mecca for
'Umar and Mu'awiya), 171
Khalid ibn al-Walid (military com-
mander), 93, 95, 151; ridda campaign
of, 100-105; foreign campaigns of,
121-123, 126

Khalid ibn Asid (military commander
during ridda), 100
Khalifat allah title, 209-211, 255
Kharijites, 189-190, 191; in hirst Civil
War, 162-165, 166, 167; in Second
Civil War, 186, 187
Khath ‘am tribe, 124

Khawla bint Ja'far ‘’al-Hanafiyya” (captive
of Hanifa tribe, concubine of ‘Ali),
102-103, 183
Khawlan tribe, 124
Khaybar, 47, 48, 93, 95
Khazraj clan, 35, 42, 74, 98
Khorezm, 196

Khosro 1 Anoshirwan, Sasanian king, 18,

22

Khosro II Parviz, Sasanian king, 8-9, 18,
24-25, 26, 34
Khurasan, 129, 130
Khutba (sermon), 214-215
Khuza'a tribe, 95
Khuzistan, 128-129
Kinana tribe, 100, 124
Kinda tribe, 102, 124
Kitah al-amwal. 111
Koran. See Qur’an (Koran)

Kufa, 150; Believer’s expansion into,
128-131, 136, 139; leadership in, 153;
First Civil War in, 154-156, 158-159,
163-164, 167; strategic importance of,
172, 173-174; Second Civil War in,
177-188, 191-192; Shi'ism of, 183-186;
Penitents of, 184-185, 189
Kusayla (Berber chief), 173

274

Index

Lakhm tribe, 124, 128
Last Judgment, $9, 78-82, 97; as moti-
vator for conquests, 125, 143-144,
197-199; redeemer (mahdi) of,

183-184, 192. Dome of the Rock, 202
Late antiquity, 1-3, 238-239; maps of, 2,
26; Sasanian Empire of, 3-4, 17-27;
Byzantine Enpire of, 3-17; commerce
of, 23-24, 32-34, 36-37; wars of, 24-27;
Arabia of, 27-34

Late-origins hypothesis (of Qur'an),
54-56, 243 '

Later campaigns of expansion, 196-198
Later Roman Empire. See Byzantine
Empire

Leadership: of early advisors to Muham-
mad, 94-96; Quraysh tribe in, 95-97,
98, 102, 105, 147-151, 171, 189,

192-193; succession struggles in,
97-106, 145-155; amir af-mu’minin
title, 98-99, 150; piety of, 151-152. 153,
162-163, 167, 169-170, 180; Umayyad
clan in, 152-153, 170-171, 177-188;
role of prececence in, 167-168; role of
kinship in, 1C8; effectiveness of,
168-169; Kharijite views of, 189. See
also Civil wars (fitna)

Leather, 33
Libya, 130

Literary sources. See Sources
Lot, 60

Madhar, 122, 185
Madhhij tribe, 103, 124
Maghrib, 173
Mahdi, 183-18*, 192
Mahra, 100

Makhzunt clan 42, 93, 171
Makran, 130

Malik “al-Ashtar” al-Nakha‘i (commander
in conquest of Iraq), 150, 158-159
Malik ibn Bahdal (chief of Syrian Kalb
tribe), 128

Ma’mun (Abba.'id caliph, 198—218/81 3—
833), 233, 235

Manadhir, 128-129
Manbij, 124

Manichaeism, 20, 22, 76
Maps: Byzantine Empire, ca. 565c.e., 2;
Sasanian Empire, ca. 565 c.e., 2; last
Byzantine-Sasanian War, 26; Arabia,
ca. 600c.e„ 28; campaigns of expan-
sion, 120, 198
Mardaitc tribe, 186
Marj Rahit, battle of, 183, 185
Mar Saba monastery, 12
Martyrdom, 191
Martyrium design, 200-202
Marv, 130, 140, 173-174
Marwan ibn al-Hakam (Umayyad chief
and amiral-mu ‘minin, 64-65/684-
685), 158, 170, 182-183
Massisa, 131

Martrice, Byzantine emperor, 24
Maysun (Mu'awiya’s wife, of Kalb tribe),
176, 177

Mazdakism, 20, 22

Mecca, 34-38, 102; Ka‘ba shrine of, 35,
37, 40, 64-66, 181, 215, 241; commerce
of, 36-38, 40; Muhammad’s struggle
with, 40-49, 80-81, 92-93, 151;
pilgrimages to, 47-48, 50, 64, 215-216;
Hudaybiya agreement of, 48-49;
Muhammad’s return to, 49-50, 93-95,
169; as direction of prayer, 125; First
Civil War in, 166; Second Civil War
in, 180-182, 188. See also Emigrants
(muhajirun)

Medina (Yathrib), 34-35, 102; Jewish
community of, 35, 43-44, 45-47,

72-74, 82; Muhammad’s emigration to,
42-43; political autonomy of, 43-44;
emigrants to, ^3-45, 98; Muhammad’s
work in, 43 -50, 74-77, 92-95; umma
(community) document of, 44, 72-75,
227-232, 245; social regulation of, 81;
taxation (sadaqa) by, 94, 98, 100-102;
leadership struggles in, 98—99; suc-
cession struggles in, 98-100; First
Civil War in, 166; Second Civil War

Index

275

in, 180-182, See also Emigrants
(muhajirun); I lelpers (ansar)

Mesopotamia, BO-131
Militancy. See jihad

Military forces, 124-127, 129; nomads in,
100, 102, 124, 126; standing army of,
136, 172, 174, 248; garrison towns
(amsar) of, 136-141, 150, 172-174,
191-192; salaries of, 174, 175, 197;
Christians and Jews in, 176, 181, 212.
See also Leadership
Modesty, 66

Monastic movement, 12, 14-15, 240
Monophysite churches, 11, 16, 20-21,

132, 176,212

Monotheism, 38, 87; of Christianity
and Judaism, 10, 30-31,204, 221;
Zoroastrian form of, 20; of Believers,
41, 46, 49, 58-59, 204; ecumenism of,
68-74, 109-114, 119,212,249-250;

expansion of, 101-102
Montanists, 31
Moses, 60
Mosques, 44
Mosul, 131

Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan (Umayyad amir
al-mu ‘rninin, 41-60/661-680), 50, 96;
as amir al-mu “minin, 99, 102-103,
163-165, 167, 170-177, 252-253;
ties with Syrian Christians of, 128,
176-177, 182, 252; as governor of Syria,
141-142, 152; First Civil War of,
158-166, 169; appointments by,
170-171; conquests by. 171-174;
dissatisfaction with leadership of,
174-177; wealth of, 175-176; death and
succession of, 177-178; maqsura screen
of, 215-216

Mu'awiya II ibn Yazid (Umayyad amir
al-mu ‘ minin briefly in 64/684),
181-182, 192

Mughira ibn Shu'ba (prophet’s body-
guard; governor ofKufa), 171, 174
Muhajir ibn Abi Umayya (military
commander during ridda), 100

Muhajirun, 85, 203—204
Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah, the prophet,

1; birth of, 38; traditional biography of,
39-56, 242, 244-245; status as prophet
of, 60, 74-77, 93, 111-112, 204-206,
216-217; expanded influence of, 92-97,
120, 169; death and succession of,
97-106, 146; kinship of, 168; hadiths
of, 206, 215; origin stories of, 216-217.
See also Leadership; Qur’an (Koran)
Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr (governor of
Egypt for ‘Ali), 159-160, 164-165
Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya (son of ‘Ali
by Khawla), 102, 183-184
Muhammad ibn al-Qasim al-Thaqafi
(conqueror of Sind), 196-197
Muhammad ibn Ishaq (eighth-century
author), 227

Mukhtar ibn Abi ‘Ubayd (Shi'ite leader
in Iraq), 178-180, 183-186, 191-192
Mu 'minun, 57. See also Believers'

(mu “minun) movement
Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr (governor of Iraq
for his brother ‘Abd Allah ibn
al-Zubayr), 182, 185-188
Musa ibn Nusayr (commander in
conquest of North Africa), 196
Musaylima (“false prophet” of Hanifa
tribe), 101

Mushrikun. See Polytheism
Muslim ibn 'Aqil ibn Abi Talib (cousin
and supporter of Husayn ibn ‘Ali),

178

Muslims ( muslimun ), 57-58; original
meaning of muslim, 71-72; redefined
meaning of muslim , 203-204, 217,
220-223

Muthanna ibn Haritha (chief of Shayban
tribe during conquest), 122, 126
Muzayna tribe, 95, 102

N ahi. See Prophets/prophecy ( nahi and
rasul)

Nadir clan, 35,42,46-47,73
Nahrawan massacre, 162-164, 166

276

Index

Najd, 101, 127

Najda ibn ‘Amir (Kharijite leader in
eastern Arabia), 186
Najran, 166
Nakhla raid, 45, 51
Namir ibn al-Qasit tribe, 122
Nasrid clan, 32
Nazoreans, 31

Nestorians, 11-12, 13, 20-22, 212, 249
Nihavand, 129
Nishapur, 129
Noali, 60

Nomads, 86, 95, 134; participation in
ridda wars of, 100, 102; as target of
expansion, 121-122; participation in
Believers’ expansion campaigns of, 124,
126

North Africa, 105, 131-132, 172-173, 253
Numerology, 51

Oases, 35-36

Occasions of revelation literature, 53-54
Ohrmazd (Ahura Mazda), 18-20
Origin stories, 216-217, 255
Orthodox Christianity. See Christians/
Christianity

Pagans. See Polytheism
Palestine: Believers’ expansion into,
106-107, 108-110, 118, 121, 124-125;
amsar (garrison towns) in, 136; Second
Civil War in, 183
Papyri, 91-92, 99
Passivity, 83

Penkaye. See John bar Penkaye
Persian Empire. See Sasanian Empire
Philip the Arab, Byzantine emperor, 21
Phocas, Byzantine emperor, 24-25
Piety and righteous behavior, 61-68, 245,
255; prayer as, 44-45, 61-63, 115, 125,
139, 214-216, 245, 255; pilgrimage as,
47-48. 50, 64,215-216; charity
(zakat and sadaqa) as, 63-64, 245;
fasting as, 64-65, 215, 245; dietary
rules of, 66, 202; modesty as, 66;

expectations of leaders of, 151-152,

153, 162-163, 167, 169-170, 180; of
Kharijites, 162-164

Pilgrimages, 153, 215-216; lesser (' umra )
pilgrimages, 47-48, 64; major (hajj)
pilgrimages, 50, 64
Plague, 7-8

Polytheism, 29-31, 35, 41, 58-59, 87
Prayer, 44-45, 61-63, 214-216, 245, 255;
direction of, 45, 115, 125; Arabic
language of, 139; at Friday services,
214-215

Precedence (sabiqa), 167-168
Prophets/prophecy (nabi and rasul), 31,
59-61, 76-77, 242, 246; Muhammad’s
status as, 60, 74-77, 93, 111-112,
204-206, 216-217; false prophets,
100-101

Qadisiyya, battle of, 128
Qashan, 129

Qatari ibn al Fuja’a (Kharijite leader), 187
Qaynuqa’ clan, 35, 42, 46, 73-74
Qayrawan, 173
Qays tribe, 182-183
Qazvin, 129

Qibla (prayer orientation), 45, 115, 125,
214

Qinnasrin, 124
Qom, 129
Qumis, 129

Qur’an (Koran), 53-57; origin of, 40-41,
54-56, 116, 243-244; occasions of
revelation literature on, 53-54;
monotheism in, 68-72, 87; Meccan
and Medinese sections of, 80-81;
escape clauses of, 83-84; 9th chapter
(Sutat al-tawba) of, 83-84; Arabic
language of, 139, 218; codification
under ‘Uthman of, 153-154; early
reciters of, 154; original codices of,

154; use in battle of, 161; definition
of muslim in, 204; legitimation by
al-Malik of, 206-208, 221; English
translations of, 242-243

Index

277

Quraysh tribe, 35-37, 40; clashes with
Muhammad of, 41-42, 44-48, 49; as
early Believers, 42-43, 93; Hudaybiya
agreement of, 48-50, 92-93; leadership
roles of, 95-97, 98, 102, 105, 124,
147-151, 171, 189, 192-193; wealth of,
149-150; in First Civil War, 156-158,
177-178; in Second Civil War, 181,

182. See also Umayyad clan
Qurayza clan, 35, 42, 47, 73, 82
Qurra ibn Sharik (governor of Egypt), 207

Al-Rabadha, 100, 104, 248
Ramadan fast, 64, 215
Ramhormuz, 128-129
Rasul. See Prophets/propheey Inch: and
rnsul )

Rayy, 129

Redeemer (mahdi), 183-184, 192
Reunification. See Emergence of Islam
Rhodes, 174

Ridda campaigns, 100-105, 116, 242, 248;
subject populations from, 102-103;
ideological goals of, 103-104; military
organization of, 103-105; loyalists of, 127
Righteous behavior. See Piety and righteous
behavior

Ritual practices. See Piety and righteous
behavior; Prayer

Roman Empire, 1-10; reach of, 5-6, 9;
coordinate emperors of, 6-7; deified
emperors of, 10. See also Byzantine
Empire

Ruqayya (daughter of prophet), 41
Rustam (Sasanian general), 128

Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas (commander in
conquest of Iraq), 41, 127-128, 1 52—
153, 160

Safar, battle of, 161
Sahm clan, 171

Sa'id ibn al-‘As (governor in Kufa and
Medina), 150, 152, 170
St. Menas Church, 108
St. Sergius, 181

St. Simeon monastery, 14-15, 222-223
St. Simeon the Stylite, 13, 15
Sajah (“false prophetess” of Tamim tribe),
101

Sakun tribe, 102, 124
Salih, 60
San‘a', 166
Sarakhs, 130
Sarat region, 126-127
Sarjun (Sergius) ibn Mansur (chief
financial administrator for Mu'awiya),

176, 182, 192, 253

Sasanian Empire, 3-4, 17-27, 240-241;
maps of, 2, 26; wars with Byzantium
of, 8-9, 18, 23-27; Zoroastrianism of,
13, 18-20, 22; Ctesiphon, 17-18, 19,

21, 128; reach of, 17-18, 22-23;
non-Zoroastrian communities of,
20-22; hierarchical society of, 22;
alliances in Arabia of, 31-34; Believers’
expansion into, 105-107, 115-118, 121,

125- 131

Script, 207-208

Sebeos (Armenian bishop and chroni-
cler), 114, 136

Second Civil War, 177-188, 253; early
Shi'ism in, 178-180; Battle of the
Harra of, 180-181; in Arabia, 180-182,
188; in Syria, 181-183, 186-188; Battle
of Marj Rahit of, 183, 185; in Iraq,
183-188; Kharjite rebellion of,

186, 187

Sergius ibn Mansur. See Sarjun (Sergius)
ibn Mansur (chief financial administra-
tor for Mu'awiya)

Shahada, 112, 205-206, 208-210, 212,
249, 254-255

Shapur I, Sasanian king, 21
Shavban tribe, 100, 102-103, 122,

126- 128

Shi'ism: emergence of, 157, 178, 190-191;
eschatological redeemer (mahdi) of,
183-184, 192; in the Second Civil War,
183-186; role of *Ali and Husayn in,
190-191; martyrdom in, 191

278

Index

Shurahbil ibn Hasana (commander in
conquest of Syria), 121
Shuras, 132-133, 147, 158, 163, 251
Sijistan, 130, 196
Silk Road, 23-24, 33
Single shahada, 112, 212, 249, 254-255
Sira (biography of Muhammad), 227
Sistan, 173-174
Slavery, 102-103, 107, 197
Sophronius (bishop of Jerusalem), 107,
110, 116

Sources: traditional Muslim accounts,
50-52,91.98, 104, 106, 119-120,
133-134; contemporary non-Muslim
accounts, 52-53, 92, 106-113, 116-118,
134, 142, 248-250; the Qur’an (Ko-
ran), 53-57, 90-91; documentary
evidence, 91-92, 99, 104, 107, 112-116,
205

South Asia, 105-106
Statement of faith (shahada), 112,
205-206,208-210,212, 254-255
Struggles among Believers. See Civil wars
(fitna)

Sulayman ibn ‘Abd al-Malik (Umayyad
amir al-mu ’ minin , 96-99/715-717),

196

Sulaym tribe, 95, 101, 102, 124
Sunni, 191
Susa, 128-129

Syria, 96-97, 105; Believers' expansion
into, 107-110, 120-126; amsar (gar-
rison towns) in, 136-139; language use
in, 139-140; Believers’ governance of,
141-142; governance of, 152; First Civil
War in, 160-166, 252; Kalb tribe of,
176, 177,181-183, 192-193,212,252;
Second Civil War in, 181-183,

186-188; Umayyad dynasty in,

194-224

Tabala, 166
Al-Tabari, 117
Tabaristan, 130, 196
Tabuk. 50

Ta’if, 42, 49, 93, 95, 102, 126, 166
Talha ibn Khuwaylid (“false prophet” of
Asad tribe), 101, 127
Talha ibn ‘Ubayd Allah (Meccan leader
in First Civil War), 41, 149—150,
157-159, 168

Tarninr tribe, 101, 102-103, 122
Tariq ibn Ziyad (commander in conquest
of North Africa and Spain), 196
Tarsus, 131

Taxation ( sadaqa ), 94, 98, 100-102; of
monotheist populations, 112-113, 117,
122, 176; of foreign populations, 130,
136, 140-142, 149, 197; non-Muslim
administrators of, 176
Taym clan, 41
Tayyi’ tribe, 101, 102
Temple Mount, Jerusalem, 13, 125,
200-202

Thaqif, 102, 127, 129
Thaqif tribe, 49, 126, 171
Theodore (Byzantine general), 124
Theodosius 1, Byzantine Emperor, 9, 13
Theophanes (ninth-century Byzantine
chronicler), 174
Thomas the Presbyter, 53, 106
Trade, 23-24; on the Silk Road, 23-24,

33; in Arabia, 32-34, 36-37, 40
Transformation of Believers’ movement.

See Emergence of Islam
Transliteration conventions, xvii-xviii
Trench, battle of the, 47, 74, 82, 103
Trinitarian doctrine of Christianity, 58-59,
70,77, 200-201, 204, 212-214, 221
Tripoli, 125, 141-142, 172
True Cross, 25, 27
Tunisia, 130, 173
Tus, 130
Tustar, 129

‘Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad (governor of Iraq),
174, 178-180, 182-185, 189
Ubayy ibn Ka‘b (early Syrian Qur’an
reciter), 154
Ubulla, 122, 128

Index

279

Uhud, battle of, 46, 93, 103

‘Ukaz, 33

■Uraan, 93, 96, 100

‘Umar ibn al-Khattab {second successor
of Muhammad, 13-23/634-644), 95,

97; selection as amiral-mu ’minin of,
105, 146-148; foreign campaigns of,
105-106, 123, 125-127, 130-133;
death and succession of, 132-133;
governance of foreign lands under,

149; leadership policies of, 151; on
succession, 169

'Umar II ibn ‘Abd al ‘Aziz (Umayyad
amiral-mu ’minin, 99-101/717-720),
221-223

Umayyad clan, 41, 44, 95-96; leadership
roles of, 152-153, 170-171, 177-188,
recognition by Sunnis of, 191; trans-
formation of Believers’ movement
under, 195-203, 216-217; coins of
dynasty of, 208-210, 255. See also ‘Abd
al-Malik ibn Marwan (Umayyad amir
al-mu 'minin, 65-86/685-705);
Emergence of Islam; Second Civil
War

Umma (community) document, 44,
72-75, 227-232, 245

Umm Kulthum (daughter of prophet),

41

Umm Qays, 201

‘Uqba ibn Naff (governor of North Africa
for Mu'wiva), 171, 173

‘Urwa ibn al-Zubayr (early scholar), 216

‘Utba ibn Ghazwan (commander in
conquest of southern Iraq, governor),
134-135

‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan (third successor to
Muhammad, 23-34/644-656), 41;
foreign campaigns of, 105-106,
130-133; as amir al-mu’ minin, 133,
146-148; institutions of governance of.
139; dissatisfaction with leadership of,

1 50-1 56, 170; family favoritism of,
152-153; religious practice of, 153;
codification of the Qur’an (Koran) by,

153-154, 252; First Civil War of,
155-156; murder of, 156-157, 158,
162-163

Valerian, Byzantine emperor, 21
Wadi al-Qura, 95

Walid ibn ‘Abd al-Malik (Umayyad
amiral-mu ’minin, 86-96/705-715),

196

Walid ibn ‘Uqba (early governor in Iraq),
152, 153, 157-158

Wars. See Civil wars (fitna); Expansion of
the Believers’ rule
Writing, 207-208

Yamama, 101, 175

Yarmuk, battle of, 107, 124, 125, 127

Yathrib. See Medina (Yathrib)

Yazd, 129

Yazdagird III, Sasanian king, 1
28-129

Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan (commander in
conquest of Syria), 50, 96, 121, 151,
Yazid ibn Mu‘awiya (Umayyad amir
al-mu ’minin, 60-64/680-683),
177-182, 192
Year of delegations, 94
Yemen, 27-28, 127; Jewish communi-
ties of, 30; economic significance
of, 33-34; Ethiopian invasion of,

34; Sasanian occupation of, 34;
early outposts of Believers in, 96;
military recruits from, 103; in
Believers’ expansion campaigns, 124,
127

Zabulistan, 130
Zachariah, 60
Zaranj, 173-174

Zayd ibn Haritha (adopted son of
prophet), 47, 48
Zayd ibn Thabit (charged with
preparing first edition of Qur’an),
153-154

280

Index

Ziyad ibn Abihi (or ibn Abi Sufyan)
(Mu'awiya’s long-term governor in
Iraq), 113, 171, 173-174
Zoroastrians/Zoroastrianism, 1 3,
18-20, 22, 110-111,130,212,241,
249

Znbayr ibn al ‘Awwam (Meccan leader in
first civil war), 41, 149-150, 158-159, 168
Zuhra clan, 41

Al-Zuhri. See Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (early
scholar)

Zurvanism, 20

"This is an invaluable book. Not only does it provide a sane and lucid
guide to the origins ol Islam, a topic that is currently more mired in con-
troversy than any other in the entire field of ancient history, but it is also
a stimulating and original work of scholarship in its own right.”

— Tom Holland, author of Millennium

"Donner is one of the leading scholars of early Islam in the world. No
other book I know of distills the often highly arcane and dispersed stuff
of scholarship on the first century of Islamic history into such an ac-
cessible narrative account that, in addition, offers a compelling new in-
terpretation on the formation of Islamic confessional identity.
A tremendous achievement."

—Ahmet Karamustafa, Washington University in St. Louis